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MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



What we Really Know about Shake- 
speare. i2mo, cloth. Price, $1.25. 

The Life of Dr. Anandabai Joshee, a 
Kinswoman of the Pundita Ramabai. 
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Letters Home from Colorado, Utah, 
and California. i2mo. Price, $1.50. 

Barbara Fritchie. A Study. With Por- 
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ROBERTS BROTHERS, 

Publishers. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS 

OR 

&txi Conbersattons; 

WITH 

MARGARET FULLER 



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE GREEKS AND 
ITS EXPRESSION IN ART 



Held at the House of the Rev. George Ripley 
Bedford Place, Boston 

BEGINNING MARCH 1, 184-1 



REPORTED BY CAROLINE W. HEALEY 



BOSTON 
ROBERTS BROTHERS 

1895 






-£ 



3V 



Copyright, 1895, 
By Roberts Brothers. 

All rights reserved. 



JHttibetsttB Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Page 

Preface 5 

Members of the Class 17 

I. General Mythological Statement 25 
II. General Statement Continued. 

R. W. E. Present 1 40 

III. Story from Novalis. Apollo . . 60 

IV. Minerva. The Serpent 77 

V. Venus and Psyche. R. W. E. 

Present 95 

VI. Cupid and Psyche. Margaret, and 

Elisabeth Hoar 106 

VII. Pluto and Tartarus 123 

VIII. Mercury and Orpheus. R. W. E. 

Present 135 

IX. Hermes and Orpheus 147 

X. Bacchus and the Demigods . . . 156 

1 Emerson's presence at Conversations II. V. and VIII. 
is noted above, because in his contribution to Margaret's 
" Memoirs " he shows that his attendance made absolutely 
no impression on him. He states that there were but Jive 
Conversations, and that he was present only at the second. 



PREFACE. 



TN 1839, Margaret Fuller, delicate in 
health and much overtaxed, con- 
sented to gratify many who loved her 
by opening in Boston a series of " Con- 
versations for Women." In a Circular 
quoted by Emerson, she says to Mrs. 
Sophia Ripley : — 

" Could a circle be assembled in earnest, 
desirous to answer the questions, c What were 
we born to do ? ' and ' How shall we do it ? ' I 
should think the undertaking a noble one.' , 

This was certainly the original intent 
of the famous " Fuller Conversations," 
which, beginning then, were continued at 



6 PREFACE. 

intervals, until Margaret left Boston for 
New York in 1844. 

It seems a little singular, therefore, to 
find her writing to Ralph Waldo Emer- 
son of this series, Nov. 25, 1839, as 
follows : — 

" The first day's topic was the genealogy 
of Heaven and Earth ; then the Will or 
Jupiter ; the Understanding, Mercury : the 
second day's, The celestial inspiration of 
Genius, perception and transmission of Divine 
Law ; Apollo the terrene inspiration, Bacchus 
the impassioned abandonment. Of the thun- 
derbolt, the caduceus, the ray and the grape, 
having disposed as well as might be, we came 
to the wave and the sea-shell it moulds to 
beauty. . . . 

"I assure you, there is more Greek than 
Bostonian spoken at the meetings ! " 

Under the forms suggested by My- 
thology, Margaret proceeded to open all 
the great questions of life. In a literary 
sense, she distinctly stated that she knew 



PREFACE. 7 

little about the doings on Olympus, nor 
had she received any help from German 
critical works, — of which at the present 
day she would have found many. 

These Conversations owed their attrac- 
tion first to the absolute novelty of her 
theme to many of those she addressed, 
and still more to the variety and fresh- 
ness of her own treatment. The open- 
ing, at the Boston Athenaeum, of the 
splendid collection of casts presented by 
Thomas Handasyd Perkins, and many 
private collections of pictures, engrav- 
ings, gems, and miniature casts, had in- 
terested her intensely, and both mind and 
fancy were absorbed in the contempla- 
tion of their themes. In these Conver- 
sations she depicted what she had gained 
from Art, rather than the little that she 
had acquired through study. If I may 
judge from a later experience, her Latin 
studies rather injured than developed her 



8 PREFACE. 

brilliant fancies. She never could re- 
member what she had said, never could 
repeat a brilliant saying, and, if obliged 
to read any illustration, read it, as all her 
friends admitted, very badly. From a 
statement made to Emerson, I quote the 
following : — 

" Her mood applied itself to the mood of her 
companion, point to point, in the most limber, 
sinuous, vital way ; . . . and this sympathy 
she had for all persons indifferently." 

The communication of which the above 
is a sample I have always read with 
amazement, for I never knew a person 
of whom it would seem less true. When 
conversing with one sympathetic person, 
it was undoubtedly true ; when resting 
upon the affection and loyalty of her 
young women, — a most gifted and ex- 
traordinary circle, — it was doubtless 
equally so ; but when the class of March, 



PREFACE. 9 

1841, was formed, a very different aspect 
of herself appeared. 

The fame of her " talks " had spread. 
She had great need of money, and some 
of the gentlemen who were accustomed 
to talk with her, and some of the ladies 
of her day-class, suggested an evening 
class, to be composed of both ladies and 
gentlemen, and to meet at the house of 
the Rev. George Ripley in Bedford Place. 
Ten Conversations were to be held, and 
the tickets of admission cost twenty 
dollars each, a very high price for that 
time. It was in the book-room of Elisa- 
beth Peabody that I first heard them dis- 
cussed. I was very young to join such 
a circle ; and when she invited me, Elisa- 
beth had more regard, I think, to Mar- 
garet's purse, than to my fitness for the 
company. But it was a great opportu- 
nity. The members were full of excite- 
ment over the projected opening of 



10 PREFACE. 

Brook Farm. All were in good spirits, 
and bright sayings ran back and forth. 
I had been carefully trained in the Art 
of Reporting, and at that time made 
careful abstracts on the following day of 
any lecture that had interested me. In 
these I trusted to my memory. It was 
not possible to do this with the Conver- 
sations; so I invented a sort of short- 
hand, and carried note-book and pencil 
with me. I sat a little out of sight 
that I might not embarrass Margaret, but 
Elisabeth Peabody and Mrs. Farrar found 
me out. Elisabeth wrote what she called 
an abstract, every night ; but an examina- 
tion of her abstracts quoted by Mr. Emer- 
son shows that what she wrote was not 
what any one said, but the impression 
made upon her own mind by it. These 
abstracts she always read to me, the next 
morning. I wrote out my short-hand 
notes before breakfast and carried them 



PREFACE. 11 

down to her about noon. I greatly en- 
joyed listening to her papers, and she 
was so absorbed in them that she often 
forgot to ask for mine, which was a great 
relief to me. 

So far as I know, these Reports of 
mine are the only attempt ever made 
deliberately to represent these or any 
of Margaret's " Conversations " word for 
word. Of course, much was omitted as 
not worth recording, nor did I ever write 
down anything that I could not under- 
stand. Many of the members I knew 
intimately, and fell naturally into writ- 
ing of them by initials and first names, 
as they always spoke to and of each 
other. At times I fell back into the 
Mr., Mrs., or Miss, which was my own 
habit. It is well to call those we love 
by any name they will permit, but the 
familiar habit of the Transcendental 
circle was full of social peril to the 



12 PREFACE. 

younger members, who, conceiving it a 
proof of genius, followed it, when its 
origin was forgotten, and were much 
misunderstood in consequence in later 
years. 

I offer the Reports exactly as they 
were written. I should like to alter 
them in several small ways if I could do 
it honestly. We met to discuss Grecian 
Mythology as interpreted to Margaret's 
mind by Art ; but Latin and Greek names 
were used as if they were synonymous, 
and Latin poems were quoted, as well as 
Greek traditions. This confused my 
mind then, and does still. Athene and 
Minerva, Zeus and Jupiter, are by no 
means the same persons to me, Art or 
no Art. 

It may be thought by those who can- 
not remember the persons who enacted 
this little drama, or by those who do 
remember and know well how very dis- 



PREFACE. 13 

tinguished a company this was, that I 
should have eliminated my own reflec- 
tions, and dropped out of the story. 

This would I think have been greatly 
unjust to Margaret, who never enjoyed 
this mixed class, and considered it a fail- 
ure so far as her own power was con- 
cerned. She and Mr. Emerson met like 
Pyramus and Thisbe, a blank wall be- 
tween. With Mr. Alcott she had no 
patience, and no one of the class seemed 
to understand how sincere and deep was 
her interest in the theme. In no way 
was Margaret's supremacy so evident 
as in the impulse she gave to the minds 
of younger women. 

It was the wish of Margaret's mother 
and brothers, as it is also the wish of her 
surviving relatives, that I should print 
these pages. After Arthur's death, 
Richard Fuller undertook to carry out a 
plan to which both had agreed, and 



14 PREFACE. 

which Margaret's mother had greatly at 
heart. They desired that I should write 
a simple, straightforward account of Mar- 
garet, including her residence in Italy, 
her marriage, the birth of her child, and 
her death. This they intended to print 
at their own expense, and they thought 
it might be so written as to put an end to 
many absurd and painful rumors which 
had followed the publication of the first 
Memoir. That I might prepare for this, 
all Margaret's manuscripts were in my 
custody for more than a year. The 
completion of the work was prevented 
by Richard Fuller's unexpected death. 
No surviving member of the family was 
able to carry out his intention. 

I still have in my possession the esti- 
mate of his sister's character which 
Richard made for my use. 

I should like to add, that the scholar 
will see that the stories from Apuleius 



PREFACE. 15 

and Novalis do not exactly correspond 
to the originals. They were reported 
exactly as they were told. 

CAROLINE HEALEY DALL. 

Sept. 1, 1895, 

Washington, D. C. 



A LIST OF PEESONS 

ATTENDING 

THE CLASS NAMED IN THIS REPORT. 

About thirty persons usually attended. 



George Ripley. The well-known clergy- 
man, settled over a Unitarian church in 
Purchase St., Boston, afterward the Presi- 
dent of the Association at Brook Farm, 
and later literary editor of the New York 
" Tribune." 

Sophia Dana Ripley, his wife. 

Elisabeth Palmer Peabody. A woman of 
remarkable accumulations of learning, 
and as remarkable a breadth of sympathy. 
She was a teacher, — an enthusiastic ad- 
vocate of the Kindergarten, and opened at 
No. 13 West St., Boston, a foreign Circu- 
lating Library, which soon became a sort 
of Literary Exchange of the greatest use 



H 



18 MEMBERS OF THE CLASS. 

to New England. Her own great powers 
did not accomplish all they ought, because 
it was impossible for her to apply them 
systematically. 

Frederick Henry Hedge. The well-known 
German and ecclesiastical scholar, whose 
remarkable scholarship and character have 
not yet received the commemoration they 
deserve. He was at this time settled over 
the church in Bangor, Maine. 

James Freeman Clarke. Already the pastor 
of the Church of the Disciples, in Boston, 
and preaching at Amory Hall. The outline 
of his lovely and useful life is preserved in 
a memoir by the Rev. E. E. Hale, D.D. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Concord phi- 
losopher. 

Mrs. Farrar, born Rotch, the wife of the 
Harvard Professor of Physical Science and 
Mathematics. 

Francis G. Shaw. The son of a well-known 
Boston merchant, to be honored through 
all time as the father of Colonel Robert 
G. Shaw, who was buried where he fell, 
with the negroes whom he died to free. 



MEMBERS OF THE CLASS. 19 

Mrs. Sarah B. Shaw, his wife. 

Ann Wilby Clarke, wife of a Boston bank- 
officer and the oldest member of an English 
family of Wilby s, nearly every member 
of which was at some time a teacher in 
Boston or its neighborhood. 

Mrs. Jonathan Russell of Milton, widow of 
the U. S. Minister to Sweden (1814-1818), 
residing on the old Governor Hutchinson 
place at Milton, and 

Miss Ida Russell, her daughter. 

William White. The brother of the first 
wife of James Russell Lowell, who was 
killed by a fall from the bluff at Milwaukee 
in 1856. 

William W. Story. Sculptor, poet, and 
lawyer, and well known as a contributor 
to Blackwood. Still living. 

Caroline Sturgis, daughter of William 
Sturgis of Boston, — married later to Mr. 
Tappan, — a most gifted and charming 
creature. 

Mrs. Anna Barker Ward, wife of S. G. 
Ward, now living in Washington. 

Jones Very of Salem. A Transcendental poet. 



20 MEMBERS OF THE CLASS. 

Elisabeth Hoar was the daughter of Sam- 
uel Hoar of Concord, Mass., and of Sarah, 
the daughter of Roger Sherman of Con- 
necticut. Elisabeth was not the least gifted 
of her very gifted family. One brother, 
recently deceased, was President Grant's 
first Attorney-General ; another is the well- 
known Senator from Massachusetts to the 
Congress of the United States ; and a third, 
Edward Sherman Hoar, was distinguished 
as a scholar and botanist. To great intel- 
lectual gifts, Elisabeth added personal love- 
liness and a saintly serenity of character. 
She was betrothed to Charles Emerson (a 
brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson), who 
died of sudden illness just before the time 
appointed for their marriage. He was also 
a rarely gifted person, and after his death 
his family transferred their tenderest affec- 
tion to Elisabeth. The reader of the vari- 
ous Lives of Emerson will see that she is 
often mentioned, and several of Emerson's 
letters are addressed to her. Had she 
chosen to devote herself to literature, she 
would have been greatly distinguished. 
The Life of Mrs. Ripley of Waltham, written 



MEMBERS OF THE CLASS. 21 

for " The Women of Our First Century,'' 
and published by a committee appointed 
at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadel- 
phia, was written by her. She died in 

1878. 

A. Bronson Alcott of Concord. A memoir 
of him has been written by the Hon. F. B. 
Sanborn of Concord, assisted by Wm. T. 
Harris. 

W. Mack. A gentleman of great ability, 
who taught a school in Belmont. His 
daughter was the first wife of Stillman, the 
artist. The family is, I think, extinct, un- 
less Mrs. Stillman left a daughter. 

Sophia Peabody. A younger sister of E. P. P., 
afterwards Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

Marianne Jackson. A lovely, beloved, and 
accomplished woman, who died early. She 
was the daughter of Judge Charles Jack- 
son, one of the soundest jurists who ever 
sat on a Massachusetts bench, — the sister 
of Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Mrs. 
Charles C. Paine, and the aunt, I believe, 
of Mr. John T. Morse. 



22 MEMBERS OF THE CLASS. 

I have reserved for the last the name of 
the only sound Greek scholar among us : 
Charles Wheeler. 

Charles Stearns Wheeler. Born in Lin- 
coln, near Concord, Dec. 19, 1816, of H. U. 
1837, distinguished as a Greek scholar 
from whom much was expected. To econ- 
omize in order to pursue his Greek studies 
he built a shanty at Walden, which is said 
to have served as a suggestion to Thoreau. 
He went to Germany directly after these 
Conversations, and died suddenly of fever 
at Leipzig, in the summer of 1843. His 
death was a great grief and a great shock. 
I have not forgotten the sensation it pro- 
duced. Beloved and honored by all who 
knew him, the community of scholars was 
especially bereaved. To this day, I am 
able to trust fearlessly to any information 
obtained from him. 



" Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in 
the darkness." — Longfellow. 



MAEGAEET AND HEE FEIENDS. 



I. 

Monday Evening, March 1, 1841. 

Maegaret opened the conversation by 
a beautiful sketch of the origin of My- 
thology. The Greeks she thought bor- 
rowed their Gods from the Hindus and 
Egyptians, but they idealized their per- 
sonifications to a far greater extent. 
The Hindus dwelt in the All, the Infi- 
nite, which the Greeks analyzed and to 
some degree humanized. All things 
sprang from Coelus and Terra., — that is, 
from Heaven and Earth, or spirit and 
matter. Rhea, or the Productive En- 
ergy, and Saturn, or Time, were the chil- 
dren of Coelus and Terra. The progress 



26 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

of any people is marked by its mythi. 
Mythology is only the history of the de- 
velopment of the Infinite in the Finite. 
Saturn devoured his own children until 
the disappointed Rhea put a stone (or 
obstacle) in his way, and she succeeded 
in raising Jupiter. The development of 
human faculties was slow, therefore Time 
seemed to absorb all that Productive 
Energy brought forth, until Energy itself 
created obstacles ; and of these was born 
the Indomitable Will. Jupiter repre- 
sented that Will, and usurped the rule of 
Time, fighting with the low and sensual 
passions, represented by the Titans and 
the Giants, until he seated himself 
securely on the Olympian Throne, the 
Father of the Gods. This Will was not in 
itself the highest development of either 
Beauty, Genius, Wisdom, or Thought; 
but such developments were subject to 
it, were its children. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 27 

Juno is only the feminine form of this 
Indomitable Will. By herself she is 
inferior to it, and whenever she opposes 
it, loses the game. Vulcan, her child, is 
Mechanic Art, great in itself to be sure, 
but not comparable to the Perfect Wis- 
dom, or Minerva, which sprang ready 
armed from the masculine Will. SJie 
was greater than her Father, but still his 
child. 

Neptune, who raises always a " placid 
head above the waves," represents the 
flow of thought, — all-embracing, girdling 
in the world, Diana and Apollo, or Purity 
and Genius. 

Mercury is Genius in the extrinsic, of 
eloquence, human understanding, and 
expression. All were the embodiments 
of Absolute Ideas, of ideas that had 
no origin, — that were eternal. Love 
brooded over Chaos ; and the perfect 
Beauty and Love, represented among the 



28 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Greeks by Venus and her son, rose 
from the turbid elements. It is singular 
that even the ancients should have main- 
tained the pre-existence of Love. It 
was before Order, Men, or the Gods 
men worshipped. The fable suggests 
the truth, — Infinite Love and Beauty 
always was. It is only with their devel- 
opment in finite beings that History has 
to do. 

Here Margaret recapitulated. The 
Indomitable Will had dethroned Time, 
and, acting with Productive Energy, — 
variously represented at different times by 
Isis, Rhea, Ceres, Persephone, and so on, 
— had driven back the sensual passions 
to the bowels of the earth, while it pro- 
duced Perfect Wisdom, Genius, Beauty, 
and Love, results which were more excel- 
lent if not more powerful than their Cause. 

To understand this Mythology, we 
must denationalize ourselves, and throw 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 29 

the mind back to the consideration of 
Greek Art, Literature, and Poesy. It 
is only scanty justice that my pen can 
render to Margaret's eloquent talk. 

Frank Shaw asked her how she im- 
agined these personifications to have 
suggested themselves in that barbarous 
age. 

Margaret objected to the word bar- 
barous. She believed that in the age of 
Plato the human intellect reached a 
point as elevated in some respects as 
any it had ever touched. 

But the Gods were not the product of 
that age, but of another far more remote, 
Frank objected. Was not the infinity of 
Hindu conception impaired, when the 
Greeks attributed to the Gods the duties, 
passions, and criminal indulgences of 
men? 

Mrs. Ripley said that the virtue of the 
Hindu lay in contemplation. If a man 



30 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

had seen God, he was exempt from the 
ordinary obligations of life, and allowed 
to pass his life in quiet adoration. 

Makgaret added that the Greek knew 
better than that. He felt the necessity 
of developing the Infinite through action, 
and embodied this necessity in his art 
and poesy as well as in his myths. 

Frank seemed still to think that in 
losing the adoring contemplation of the 
Hindu, and bringing their deities to the 
human level, the Greeks had taken one 
step down. 

E. P. P. had always thought it had 
been a step up, and Ann Clarke thought 
that the Greeks forgot themselves, 
merged all remembrance of the Finite, 
in realizing the individual forces of the 
Infinite. 

William White, who had not waded 
very far into the stream, thought the 
North American Indian's worship of the 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 31 

Manitou purer than the Greek worship, 
for the very reason that the Indian 
ascribed to his Manitou no passion that 
had degraded humanity. 

Margaret said that the Indian propi- 
tiated his God by vile deeds, by ignoble 
treacheries and revenge. So the Hindu 
throws her child into the Ganges, and 
an ecstatic crowd falls before the car 
of Juggernaut. 

I thought a good deal, but did not 
speak. Did not William's question grow 
out of the simple Unity of the Indian 
worship ? But the Indian does not 
worship the Manitou because he recog- 
nizes a single First Cause, comprehend- 
ing in itself all beauty, wisdom, purity, 
and truth, but because his heart is 
naturally lifted toward an unknown 
something, which he has hardly yet 
considered as a Cause. The Greek rec- 
ognized the abstract forces of the Uni- 



32 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

verse, but did not perceive their Unity, 
and so personified them separately. 

E. P. P. suggested that the Indian had 
no literature, and had left no record of 
his Olympus! 

Margaret added that, if we compare 
the Indian Elysium with the Greek, the 
difference in spirituality is perceived at 
once. 

Henry Hedge said that Frank Shaw 
talked about Greek mythi, but nobody 
could show a purely Greek mythos. 

Frank replied that he only meant 
that when the Greek mind had acted on 
a myth, it had not refined it. 

Margaret added that it was a vulgar 
notion that the Poets of Greece created 
her Gods ; that the Poets were objective, 
and could give only humanized repre- 
sentations of them. 

Henry Hedge thought that there was 
a point to which philosophy aided and 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 33 

prompted the creative power, but, that 
point passed, rather checked its action. 
Analysis took the place of the objective 
tendency. 

Well ! said William White, would 
not the human mind, aided only by cul- 
ture, be incapable of any better idea than 
Frank Shaw suggested ? Must not reve- 
lation complete the work ? 

Margaket said that the answer to his 
question would be determined by his 
understanding of the word " revelation." 
She could not believe in a God who 
had ever left himself without a witness 
in the world. As soon as the human 
mind and will were ready, there was 
always some great Truth waiting to be 
submitted to their united action, until 
it was worn out. The beautiful Greek 
era had been succeeded by a period of 
inaction ; the Roman era by another, and 
so on. She was sorry we had wandered 



34 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

from our subject so far as to doubt her 
very premises ! 

Frank said, everything rested on those 
premises ; so he thought that the ideals 
of beauty, love, justice, and truth should 
be referred to the Infinite Mind, and not 
to the Greek. 

I wonder where he was when Margaret 
told about the Love which " was " before 
Order ! 

Henry Hedge said that Culture was 
the Mediator between the Finite and 
the Infinite. 

James Freeman Clarke, alluding to 
Mr. Hedge's previous remark upon the 
growth of philosophy, and the loss of 
the creative power, said that if that were 
a fact, it greatly diminished the proba- 
bility of the birth of pure Genius into 
the world. Plato wrote when philosophy 
was at the turning point. 

Margaret said that there were many 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 35 

proofs in Plato that the philosophers 
understood the personifications of the 
mythi. She thought that the gods, the 
demigods, and the heroes of mythology 
represented distinct classes, and that this 
was not sufficiently remembered. She 
referred to the story of the burning of 
Hercules in Ovid, where Jupiter calls 
Juno to see how well his son endures ! 

William White said that he thought 
the idea of Deity was degraded when the 
Greeks changed a hero into a god ; but if 
Culture be a Mediator, would not Plato 
have been greater had he been born into 
the nineteenth century ? 

James F. Clarke said Platos were im- 
possible now. 

Margaret agreed, and said that the 
pride of knowledge which he would find 
in the world should he appear, would be 
a greater obstacle than superstition once 
was. 



36 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Did somebody say a little while ago that 
Will indomitable was born of obstacle ? 

Margaret told William White that 
Coleridge had once said that he could 
neither measure nor understand Plato's 
ignorance ! His mind had not reached 
that altitude ! 

Henry Hedge, not willing to forego 
the possible birth of Genius, asked if 
all the experience and discovery with 
which the world had been enriched since 
Plato's time would not furnish enough 
for the new-comer to act upon? 

Margaret replied that the mind could 
not receive unless excited. She must 
go through all the intellectual experi- 
ence of a Plato, to be as great as he ; but 
she might stand upon the general or 
even her own intuitive recognition of 
the truths he had advanced, and go for- 
ward to greater results, — but still that 
would not be to make herself greater. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 37 

But, said Mrs. Ripley, in the first 
case you would be nothing but Plato. 

Margaret acceded, but begged not 
to be understood as doubting that the 
future would be capable of finer things 
than the past. 

The ideal significance of the My- 
thology was further dwelt upon, and 
much was said of the contrast between 
the thought of the priest and the wor- 
ship of the people. It was acknowl- 
edged as a matter of course, that only a 
few preserved any consciousness of the 
original significance of the Mythology. 

Henry Hedge thought that this was 
the true key to the purpose of the 
Eleusinian mysteries, whether in Egypt 
where they originated, or in Greece 
where they were introduced. Through 
them, all who chose became initiated into 
the interior meaning of the Mythology. 

Charles Wheeler added, that in 



38 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

the flourishing times of the Athenian 
Republic every citizen was compelled 
to initiate himself. 

Margaret closed our talk with a 
gentle reproof to our wandering wits. 
To prevent such desultory prattling, she 
desired that a subject should be pro- 
posed for the next evening. The story 
of Ceres or Rhea, in fact the Productive 
Energy however manifested, carried gen- 
eral favor, and Margaret said archly that 
she had thought the presence of gentle- 
men (who had never until now attended 
one of her talks) would prevent the 
wandering and keep us free from pre- 
judice ! 

I thought she was rightly disappointed. 

I cannot recall the words, but at some 
time this evening Margaret distinguished 
three mythological dynasties. The first 
was the reign of the Natural Powers. 
The second, represented by Jupiter, 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 39 

Pluto, and Neptune, stood for the height, 
the depth, and the surface or flow of 
things, the first manifestations of human 
consciousness. The third was the Bac- 
chic, Bacchus not being yet, in her esti- 
mation, the vulgar God of the wine-vat 
and the festival, but the inspired Genius, 
— being to Apollo, as she said, what the 
nectar is to the grape. 

CAROLINE W. HEALEY. 

March 2, 1841. 



II 

March 8, 1841. 

Margaret recapitulated the state- 
ments she made last week. By thus 
giving to each fabled Deity its place in 
the scheme of Mythology, she did not 
mean to ignore the enfolding ideas, the 
one thought developed in all — as in 
Rhea, Bacchus, Pan. She would only 
imply that each personification was indi- 
vidual, served a particular purpose, and 
was worshipped in a particular way. 

Before proceeding to talk about Ceres, 
she wished to remind us of the mischief 
of wandering from our subject. She 
hoped the ground she offered would be 
accepted at least to talk about ! Certainly 
no one could deny that a mythos was 
the last and best growth of a national 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS, 41 

mind, and that in this case the charac- 
teristics of the Greek mind were best 
gathered from this creation. 

Ceres, Persephone, and Isis, as well as 
Rhea, Diana, and so on, seem to be only 
modifications of one enfolding idea, — a 
goddess accepted by all nations, and not 
peculiar to Greece. The pilgrimages of 
the more prominent of these goddesses, 
Ceres and Isis, seem to indicate the 
life which loses what is dear in child- 
hood, to seek in weary pain for what 
after all can be but half regained. Ceres 
regained her daughter, but only for half 
the year. Isis found her husband, but 
dismembered. This era in Mythology 
seems to mark the progress of a people 
from an unconscious to a conscious state. 
Persephone's periodical exile shows the 
impossibility of resuming an unconscious- 
ness from which we have been once 
aroused, the need thought has, having 



42 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

once felt the influence of the Seasons, to 
retire into itself. 

Charles Wheeler reminded Mar- 
garet that she had said that the predom- 
inant goddesses, without reference to 
Greece, enfolded only one idea, that of 
the female Will or Genius, — the bounteous 
giver. He had asked her if she could 
sustain herself by etymological facts, 
and she replied that her knowledge of 
the Greek was not critical enough. 
Since then he had inquired into the 
origin of the proper names of the Greek 
deities, and found that it confirmed her 
impression. The names of Rhea, Tellus, 
Isis, and Diana were resolvable into one, 
and the difference in their etymology was 
only a common and permissible change 
in the position of the letters of which 
they are composed, or a mere provincial 
dialectic change. Diana is the same as 
Dione, also one of the names of Juno. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 43 

E. P. P. asked if Homer ever con- 
founded the last two? Margaret 
thought not. Homer was purely objec- 
tive. He knew little and cared less 
about the primitive creation of the 
myths. 

R. W. Emerson thought it would be 
very difficult to detect this secret. Ju- 
piter, for instance, might have been a 
man who was the exponent of Will to 
his race. 

Margaret said, " No ; they could have 
deduced him just as easily from Nature 
herself, or from a single exhibition of 
will power.' ' 

R. W. Emerson said that a man 
like Napoleon would easily have sug- 
gested it. 

" What a God-send is a Napoleon ! " 
exclaimed Charles Wheeler ; u let us 
pray for scores of such, that a new and 
superior mythos may arise for us ! " Is 



44 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

it malicious to suspect a subtle irony 
turned against the sacred person of 
R. W. E. in this speech? 

Margaret retorted indignantly that if 
they came, ive should do nothing better 
than write memoirs of their hats, coats, 
and swords, as we had done already, 
without thinking of any lesson they 
might teach. She could not see why 
we were not content to take the beauti- 
ful Greek mythi as they were, without 
troubling ourselves about those which 
might arise for us! 

R. W. E. acknowledged that the 
Greeks had a quicker perception of the 
beautiful than we. Their genius lay in 
the material expression of it. If we 
knew the real meaning of the names of 
their Deities, the story would take to 
flight. We should have only the work- 
ing of abstract ideas as we might adjust 
them for ourselves. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 45 

Margaret said that a fable was more 
than a mere word. It was a word of 
the purest kind rather, the passing of 
thought into form. R. W. E. had made 
no allowance for time or space or climate, 
and there was a want of truth in that. 
The age of the Greeks was the age of 
Poetry ; ours was the age of Analysis. 
We could not create a Mythology. 

Emerson asked, " Why not ? We had 
still better material." 

Margaret said, irrelevantly as it 
seemed to me, that Carlyle had attempted 
to deduce new principles from present 
history, and that was the reason he did 
not respect the respectable. 

Emerson said Carlyle was unfortunate 
in his figures, but we might have mythol- 
ogy as beautiful as the Greek. 

Margaret thought each age of the 
world had its own work to do. The 
transition of thought into form marked 



46 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

the Greek period. It was most easily 
done through fable, on account of their 
intense perception of beauty. 

Emerson pursued his own train of 
thought. He seemed to forget that we 
had come together to pursue Margaret's. 
He said it was impossible that men or 
events should stand out in a population 
of twenty millions as they could from a 
population of a single million, to which 
the whole population of the ancient 
world could hardly have amounted. As 
Hercules stood to Greece, no modern 
man could ever stand in relation to his 
own world. 

Margaret thought Hercules and Jupi- 
ter quite different creations. The first 
might have been a deified life. The 
second could not. 

Charles Wheeler said that R. W. 
E/s view carried no historical obligation 
of belief with it. We could not deny 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 47 

the heroic origin of the Greek demi- 
gods, but the highest dynasty was the 
exponent of translated thought. 

Sophia Ripley asked if the life of an 
individual fitly interwoven with her 
experience was not as fine a Poem as 
the story of Ceres, her wanderings and 
her tears ? Did not Margaret know such 
lives ? 

R. W. E. thought every man had 
probably met his Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, 
Yenus, or Ceres in society ! 

Margaret was sure she never had ! 

R. W. E. explained: "Not in the 
world, but each on his own platform." 

William Story objected. The life 
of an individual was not univer- 
sal. (!) 

Sophia Ripley repeated, " The inner 
life." 

William Story claimed to be an in- 
dividual, and did not think individual 



48 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

experience could ever meet all minds, 
— like the story of Ceres, for example. 

Sophia said all experience was uni- 
versal. 

I said nothing, but held this colloquy 
with myself. Thought is the best of 
human nature ; its fulness urges expres- 
sion : its need of being met, not only by 
one other but by every other, craves it. 
This craving is the acknowledgment of 
the universal experience. What is jmrely 
individual is perishable. Identify is to 
be separated from individuality for this 
cause. 

Margaret said the element of beauty 
would be wanting to our creations. A 
fine emotion glowed through features 
which seem to fall like a soft veil over 
the soul, while it could scarce do more 
than animate those that were obtuse and 
coarse in every outline. (!) 

"Then," said William Story, and 



MARGARET AND EER FRIENDS. 49 

my heart thanked the preux chevalier, — 
" then something is wanting in the 
emotion itself." 

William White said, stupidly, that 
sunlight could not fall with equal charm 
on rocks and the green grass. (!) 

I asked if the rock could not give 
what it did not receive ? Flung back by 
rugged points and relieved by dark 
shadows, was not the sunlight itself 
transfigured ? 

Story said every face had its own 
beauty. No act that was natural could 
be ungraceful. 

Emerson said that we all did sundry 
graceful acts, in our caps and tunics, 
which we never could do again, which 
we never wanted to do again. 

Margaret said, at last we had touched 
the point We could not restore the 
childhood of the world, but could we not 
admire this simple plastic period, and 



50 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

gather from it some notion of the Greek 
genius ? 

R. W. E. thought this legitimate. He 
would have it that we could not deter- 
mine the origin of a mythos, but we 
might fulfil Miss Fuller's intention. 

Margaret said history reconciled us 
to life, by showing that man had re- 
deemed himself. Genius needed that 
encouragement. 

Not Genius, Sophia Ripley thought; 
common natures needed it, but Genius 
was self -sup ported. 

Margaret said it might be the con- 
solation of Genius. 

Mrs. Russell asked why Miss Fuller 
found so much fault with the present. 

Margaret had no fault to find with 
it. She took facts as they were. Every 
age did something toward fulfilling the 
cycle of mind. The work of the Greeks 
was not ours. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 51 

Sophia Ripley asked if the mythology 
had been a prophecy of the Greek mind 
to itself, or if the nation had experienced 
life in any wide or deep sense. 

Margaret seemed a little out of 
patience, and no wonder! She said it 
did not matter which. The question 
was, what could we find in the mythi, 
and what did the Greeks mean that we 
should find there. Coleridge once said 
that certain people were continually say- 
ing of Shakespeare, that he did not mean 
to impart certain spiritual meanings to 
some of his sketches of life and char- 
acter ; but if Shakespeare did not mean it 
his Genius did : so if the Greeks meant not 
this or that, the Greek genius meant it. 

In relation to the progress of the ages, 
James F. Clarke said that the story of 
Persephone concealed in the bowels of 
the earth for half the year seemed to 
him to indicate something of their com- 



52 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

parative states. Persephone was the 
seed which must return to earth before 
it could fructify. Thought must retire 
into itself before it can be regenerate. 

Margaret was pleased with this, more 
especially as in the story of the Goddess 
it is eating the pomegranate, whose seed 
is longest in germinating, which dooms 
her to the realm of Pluto. 

George Ripley remarked that we 
saw this need of withdrawal in the sloth- 
ful ages when mind seemed to be imbib- 
ing energy for future action. The world 
sometimes forsook a quest and returned 
to it. We had forsaken Beauty, but we 
might return to it. 

Certainly, Margaret assented. A 
perfect mind would detect all beauty in 
the hearth-rug at her feet: the mean- 
est part of creation contained the whole ; 
but the labor we were now at to appre- 
ciate the Greek proved conclusively that 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 53 

we were not Greek. A simple plastic 
nature would take it all in with delight, 
without doubt or question. 

Or rather, amended Emerson, would 
take it up and go forward with it. 

It makes no difference, said Margaret, 
for we live in a circle. 

I did not think it pleasant to track 
and retrack the same arc, and preferred 
to go forward with R. W. E., so I asked 
if there was to be no higher poetry. 

Margaret acknowledged that there 
was something beyond the aspiration 
of the Egyptian or the poetry of the 
Greek. 

George Ripley thought we had not 
lost all reverence for these abstract 
forces. The Eleusinian mysteries might 
be forgotten, but not Ceres. We did not 
worship in ignorance. The mysteries led 
back to the Infinite. The processes of 
vegetation were actually heart-rending ! 



54 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Here, I thought, was a basis for my 
higher poetry. 

George Ripley acknowledged that it 
was so. He seemed to be more con- 
scious of the movement of the world than 
any of our party. He said we must not 
measure creation by Boston and Wash- 
ington, as we were too apt to do. There 
was still France, Germany, and Prussia, — 
perhaps Russia ! The work of this gen- 
eration was not religious nor poetic; still, 
there was a tendency to go back to both. 
There were to be ultraisms, but also, he 
hoped, consistent development 

Charles Wheeler then related the 
story of Isis, of her hovering in the form 
of a swallow round the tree in which 
the sarcophagus of Osiris had been en- 
closed by Typhon ; of her being allowed 
to fell the tree ; of the odor emitted by 
the royal maidens whom she touched, 
which revealed her Divinity to the 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 55 

Queen ; of the second loss of the body, 
as she returned home, and its final dis- 
memberment. 

There was little success in spiritualiz- 
ing more of this story than the pilgrim- 
age, and K. W. E. seemed to feel this ; for 
when Margaret had remarked that even 
a divine force must become as the birds 
of the air to compass its ends, and that 
it was in the carelessness of conscious 
success that the second loss occurred, he 
said that it was impossible to detect an 
inner sense in all these stories. 

Margaret replied, that she had not 
attempted that, but she could see it 
in all the prominent points. 

Charles Wheeler said that the vari- 
eties of anecdote proved that the stories 
were not all authentic. It was an an- 
cient custom to strike off medals in 
honor of certain acts of the Gods. To 
these graven pictures the common people 



56 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS, 

gave their own vulgar interpretations, 
as they did also to the bas-reliefs on 
their temples and monuments. 

E. P. P. said this accounted for many 
of the stories transmitted by Homer. 
When sculpture and architecture had 
lost their meaning, his inventive genius 
was only the more stimulated to find 
one. 

Charles Wheeler asked what Mar- 
garet would make of the story that the 
tears of Isis frightened children to 
death ? 

There was a general laugh, but Mar- 
garet said coolly, that children always 
shrank from a baffled hope. 

Some one contrasted Persephone with 
her mother. 

Margaret assented to whatever was 
said, and added that she had been par- 
ticularly struck with it in an engraving 
she had recently seen, in which Ceres 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 57 

stood with lifted eyes, full-eyed, ma- 
tronly, bounteous, ready to give all to 
all, while Persephone, dejected and 
thoughtful, sat meditating ; and the idea 
was strengthened by her discovering 
that Persephone was the same as Ariadne 
the deserted. I could only guess at the 
remark by Margaret's comment. It 
seemed to imply baffled hope for 
Persephone. 

The Eleusinian mysteries were now 
alluded to. Although it has been said 
that only moral precepts were inculcated 
through these, Wheeler urged that a 
whole school of Continental authors now 
acknowledged that the higher doctrines 
of philosophy were taught. 

R. W. E. added, that as initiation be- 
came more easy such instruction must 
have degenerated into a mere matter of 
form, and many of the uninitiated sur- 
pass the initiated in wisdom. 



58 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Margaret admitted this. Socrates 
was one of the uninitiated. The crowd 
seldom felt the full force of beauty in 
Art or Literature. To prove it, it was 
only necessary to walk once through the 
Hall of Sculpture at the Athenaeum, and 
catch the remarks of any half-dozen on 
Michael Angelo's "Day and Night" 
He would be fortunate who heard a 
single observer comment on its power. 

Mrs. Russell asked why the images 
of the sun and moon were introduced 
into these mysterious celebrations. 

Margaret asked impatiently why 
they had always been invoked by every 
child who could string two rhymes 
together. 

I said that if Ceres was the simple 
agricultural productive energy, of course 
the sun was her first minister, its genial 
influence being as manifest as the energy 
itself. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 59 

In regard to the etymology of the 
proper names, it seemed reasonable to 
me that this energy should have gained 
attributes as it did names. Any nation 
devoted to the chase would learn to call 
the lunar deity Diana ; any devoted to 
the cultivation of grain would project 
her as Ceres. The reproductive powers 
of flocks and herds would suggest Rhea 
or Juno, and philosophy or art would 
invoke Persephone. 

When we were talking about beauty, 
J. F. C. quoted Goethe, and said that the 
spirit sometimes made a mistake and 
clothed itself in the wrong garment. 

C. W. HEALEY. 

March 9, 1841. 



III. 

The third conversation was delayed 
by Margaret's illness, and finally took 
place — 

March 19, 1841. 

Margaret again complained that we 
wandered from the subject, and told the 
following story from Novalis. 

Imagine a room, on one side of it Eros 
and Fable at play. On the other, before 
a marble slab on which rests a vase of pure 
water, sits a fair woman named Sophia. 
Her head rests upon her hand. Between 
her and the children sits a man of rev- 
erend age, before a table at which he 
writes whatever has been or is. This is 
History; and as he finishes each sheet 
he hands it to Sophia, who dips it in the 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 61 

vase of pure water, from which it often 
emerges a perfect blank. Sometimes a 
few lines, at others a few words, some- 
times only a punctuation mark, survive 
the test. This troubles the old man. At 
last he rises and leaves the room. Fable 
springs to his vacant seat, and scribbles 
as if in play till his return, when History 
reproves her for wasting the paper, and 
passes the sheet to Sophia, when, lo ! it 
comes out from her vase unchanged. 
Fable has borne the test of Truth. His- 
tory is enraged at this, and succeeds in 
driving both Sophia and Fable from their 
home, unfairly. Sophia is driven away, 
but the child escapes by a back door, and, 
becoming bewildered in the central cav- 
erns of the Earth, falls into the power of 
the Fates. 

These respectable old ladies find the 
little Fable very troublesome, and, after 
some scolding, send her away to spin, 



62 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

when, lo ! from the recesses of the cavern 
all sorts of wonders and strange shapes 
are spun out. The Fates are frightened, 
and they seek History to learn in what 
manner they may best rid themselves 
of the intruder. However much they 
may dislike her, she is under their pro- 
tection, and History can do no more 
than advise them to send her out to 
catch Tarantulas ! Fable departs and 
meets Eros, who gives her a lyre, upon 
which she plays, and the venomous insects 
swarm about her. The Fates behold 
her return unharmed ! They had hoped 
she would be stung to death, and in 
despair Ate throws her scissors at the 
child, who gracefully avoids them. Here- 
upon the Tarantulas sting the Fates in 
the feet, at which they begin to dance. 
As their clothes are thick and heavy, 
this is rather inconvenient exercise, and 
when Fable laughs at their distress they 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 63 

send her away to spin them some thin 
dresses. Fable is tired of wandering. 
She plays upon her lyre to the Tarantu- 
las, bidding them spin, and she will give 
them three large flies. When the dresses 
are done, she carries them immediately 
to the Fates, who begin again to dance. 
The ends of the threads are still in the 
bodies of the Tarantulas, who do not like 
to be jerked about. " Behold the flies 
which I promised you," said Fable. 

Thereupon the Tarantulas fall upon 
the dancing Fates, and a new dynasty 
commences, in which Eros reigns, with 
Fable for prime minister. 

Margaret said that in the story she 
had told she had set us the example 
of wandering from the subject, but she 
hoped to some purpose. She hoped no 
one would have need to call upon little 
Fable's body-guard of Tarantulas. 

The subject of the evening was Apollo 



64 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

in contrast with Ceres, or Genius opposed 
to Productive Energy. The history of 
Apollo stood for the history of thought, 
its progressive development and its un- 
happiness. All the loves of Apollo are 
miserable. He never labors for himself. 
He uses the instruments which others 
have shaped. He is so delighted with 
the lyre, which Mercury, that is Sa- 
gacity, has made, that he gives him the 
divining-rod, and would give him more, 
but he cannot. The earnest simplicity 
with which Apollo begs Mercury to swear 
by the sacred Styx not to steal his 
quiver or his darts is beautiful ! The 
common understanding, mere human 
sagacity, may indeed lay hands on the 
weapons of the Inspired One, but it can- 
not possess them. The ray, the dart, 
the quiver, of Apollo all stand for the 
instantaneous power of thought. 

Delphi did not originally belong to 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 65 

Apollo. With the aid of Bacchus, he 
wrested it from Terra, Neptune, and 
Themis ; hence the name " Delphi," or 
"The brothers." This is only another 
instance of his independence. All things 
are made to his hand. The great con- 
trast between Ceres and Apollo lies in 
the success of each. Ceres is always 
full, always prepared to meet the call 
of humanity. Apollo is always un- 
satisfied. He transmutes whatever he 
touches, as he did one of his many loves, 
changed to a bay-tree. His changes are 
always beautiful. 

James F. Clarke asked how Margaret 
would explain the fraternal relation be- 
tween Bacchus and Apollo. 

" Don't you remember ? " she retorted. 
" I don't like to repeat it, it is so smart 
and ingenious!" Apollo and Bacchus 
seemed to her the question and the 
response. Bacchus was what the earth 



66 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

yielded to the touch of Genius. The 
grape was genial. It typified the excess 
of the earth's fruitfulness. Bacchus 
avenges the wrongs of Apollo, who is 
said never to have seen a shadow ! He 
never perceives an obstacle, but instantly 
destroys an alien nature. Whatever 
opposed Apollo met with terrible retri- 
bution, — if not from himself, then from 
others. Genius cannot endure the pres- 
ence of anything that mocks at it. 

Charles Wheeler said something 
about the flaying of Marsyas. 

Margaret said that this once seemed 
to her the most shocking of cruelties, 
but she had lately seen a picture which 
reconciled her to the deed ! After look- 
ing at the self-complacent face of Mar- 
syas, she did not wonder that Apollo 
destroyed him. She longed to see him 
do it I Apollo was never indignant at 
any sublime treachery. He forgave Mer- 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 67 

cury his theft because it was god-like, 
because he did it so well. 

Mrs. Russell said ironically that the 
destruction of the children of Niobe must 
have been a gratifying sight. 

Margaret laughed, and said, " That is 
like being reminded of the ' poor mari- 
ner,' when I say that I like to hear the 
wind blow." The indignation of Apollo 
seemed to her one of his noblest attri- 
butes. His perfect purity separated him 
from all the Gods. Ceres seemed to be 
included in the idea of many other Gods, 
as in Pan, Bacchus, Juno, and Isis ; but 
Apollo, the divine Genius, stands alone. 
There is none like him. 

Henry Hedge asked whether holiness 
appertained to Apollo. 

Margaret thought not. Holiness 
supposed a voluntary consecration of 
one's self, but there was no need of this 



68 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

in Apollo. He was pure thought, con- 
secrated, but not consciously. 

Henry Hedge said he had asked, be- 
cause, considering Jesus to have, as he 
certainly had, a mythological character, 
he thought there was a resemblance 
between him and Apollo. His own 
words justified the idea, — "I am the 
light of the world," and so on. 

Mrs. Russell asked suddenly why 
Apollo's lyre had seven strings. 

Margaret said seven was a conse- 
crated number. 

Mrs. Russell asked if it did not have 
to do with the seven planets ? 

George Ripley said there were not 
so many in that day. 

Margaret liked the reason, and wished 
she had thought of it herself! 

Some one asked about the connection 
between Diana and Apollo. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 69 

Margaret said that Genius needed a 
sister to console him. 

Emerson asked what bearing the in- 
scription over the Delphic temple had 
upon the story of Apollo, — the Divine 
pun EI, which means equally " Thou 
art " and " If," — as grand a pun as that 
of him who, dying, said he was going to 
see the great " Perhaps " ! — " le grand 
peut-etre." 

Better translated, I thought, as the 
great "May-be." 

George Kipley asked if it were not 
generally accepted positively as "Thou 
art " ? 

" Probably," Mr. Emerson said. 

Henry Hedge found another type of 
the Apollo in the Egyptian Horus. 

Mrs. Russell asked if the two Greek 
vowels had not once stood for Isis and 
Osiris. If so, they would have a natural 
connection with the oracle. 



70 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

I remembered the inscription on the 
statue of Isis, " I am all that has been 
and that shall be, and none among mor- 
tals has taken off my veil. ,, The "I 
am " of the Jews, and the " Thou art " 
of the Delphic temple are epigrammatic, 
but the same. 

Emerson, replying somewhat curtly 
to Mrs. Russell, said there were various 
explanations. 

The story of Phaeton came next. 

Henry Hedge asked how Presump- 
tion should be the child of Genius. 

" Genius must be self-confident," Mar- 
garet said, " and that might predominate." 

I asked if real Genius did not know 
its own resources and husband them. 

Margaret thought Genius often at- 
tempted more than it could do. 

I said a man might have genius and 
presume, but that if he were a genius I 
should expect him to be modest. Still, 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 71 

as it must have a crowd of imitators, it 
might become the father of presumption. 
The substance creates the shadow. 

William Story said no product could 
be as great as the producing power ; but 
that did not seem to me to touch the 
point, for the question was not whether 
Apollo could not give birth to some- 
thing less than himself, but whether the 
possession of power could create an un- 
founded claim to it. 

The story of Latona followed. 

Henry Hedge said that the word 
meant concealment. 

Margaret thought this very expres- 
sive, and said that the isolation which 
Goethe and other geniuses had been 
craving since the world began Apollo 
had no need to seek. His mother was 
concealment. The oracle was then dis- 
cussed, — how it was possible to consult 
it many times and receive each time a 



72 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

different answer, — how it could be 
bribed, as by Alexander, or would give 
two answers in one; but nothing very 
new was said. 

I remembered the double answer of 
the Pythoness to Croesus when he medi- 
tated crossing the Halys. " Thou shalt 
destroy a great empire,' ' she said. He 
thought it was the enemy's : fate decided 
it should be his own. 

Sophia Ripley thought the oracle 
belonged to Wisdom rather than Genius. 

Margaret said Minerva dwelt in 
men's houses. It was necessary a voice 
from Heaven should speak. 

Some one wondered that Jupiter had 
not possessed himself of the oracle, which 
led Margaret back to her exponents, 
and she confessed that she was not quite 
satisfied with her own definition of Jupi- 
ter as Will. 

Emerson suggested that experience 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 73 

was a prominent feature in the Jupiter, 
and named him Character. 

Character is educated Will, said Mar- 
garet, hesitating, and paused, for the 
term did not suit her. 

Juno was then spoken of as passive 
Will, and her traits were dwelt upon. It 
is amusing to see how weak the Queen 
of Olympus can be in opposition to its 
King. The peacock was probably made 
sacred to her on account of the beauty 
of its plumage, while the eagle was con- 
secrated to Jupiter on account of its 
strength. 

I said that the peacock, strutting with 
conceit, glancing at its ill-shaped feet 
and vexed enough to bawl in conse- 
quence, easily suggested the scolding 
Juno. 

Some one asked a question about Ms- 
culapius. Margaret said he was genius 
made practical. 



74 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Henry Hedge thought that Apollo 
by his own connection with the healing 
art became the symbol of physical life 
and beauty. 

William Story thought no statue 
could bear comparison with the Apollo 
Belvedere. 

Margaret preferred the Antinous. 

James Clarke asked why Art should 
present a so much more inspiring view 
of Greek Mythology than Poetry. 

Margaret said that all her ideas of it 
were deduced from Art. She did not 
profess to know much of the Greek 
authors, and depended chiefly upon 
Homer, but wished that some of the 
gentlemen who ought to know more 
would speak. 

William Story thought it was be- 
cause the poets wrote for popular ap- 
plause, for recitation and its immediate 
effect. Sculptors labored more purely 
for their Art. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 75 

I thought too that the dramatists 
often had a political aim, and manoeu- 
vred Olympus to suit it ! 

James Clarke said that if in our 
time every public speaker must bend 
to his audience to a degree, it was still 
more necessary in Greece. 

We were told to consider Minerva 
for the next conversation, and to write 
down our thoughts about her. For my 
part I don't like using Latin names for 
Greek deities. It greatly confuses my 
ideas. Jupiter and Zeus seem very dif- 
ferent to me. 

In regard to the story that Apollo 
never saw a shadow, Caroline Sturgis 
asked how Apollo could destroy an alien 
nature if he never met it. 

There was quite an unsatisfactory 
talk about this, which would have ended 
had anybody remembered how the sun 
solves the enigma every day. The 



76 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

sun never sees the shadow it destroys. 
When its rays fall, light is. It annihi- 
lates the alien by merely being. So 
Truth annihilates Falsehood, yet cannot 
meet it. The two are never in one 
presence. 

CAROLINE WELLS HEALEY. 

March 20, 1841. 



IV. 



March 26, 1841. 

Margaret opened our talk by saying 
that the subject of Wisdom presented 
more conversable points than that of 
Genius. We could all think and talk 
about Wisdom, and any man who had 
ever scratched his finger was to a degree 
wise. 

Minerva was the child of Counsel and 
Intelligent Will. She had no infancy, 
but sprang full-armed into being. Ready, 
agile, she was in herself the history of 
thought. She did not need that her 
life should be one of incident. Her 
attendant emblems are expressive : the 
Sphinx, the owl, the serpent, the cock, 
and the javelin suggest her whole story. 



78 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

William White asked why Genius 
was masculine and Wisdom feminine. 

Margaret thought no one could find 
any difficulty in the fact that Genius 
was masculine. It presented itself to 
the mind in the full glow of power. 
The very outlines of the feminine form 
were yielding, and we could not associate 
them with a prominent, self-conscious 
state of the faculties. Wisdom was like 
woman, always ready for the fight if 
necessary, yet never going to it ; taking 
reality as a basis, and classifying and ar- 
ranging upon it all that Genius creates, 
— seeing the relations and proper values 
of things. 

George Eilpey objected to this defi- 
nition. He might have imbibed a He- 
brew idea, but the office of Wisdom was 
surely something more than this, — a 
purely mechanical and orderly tact. 

Margaret said she had not meant to 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 79 

give our view of it, only the Greek idea 
as manifest in the story of Minerva. To 
William White she said, smiling, that 
she supposed he had not wondered so 
much that Genius should be masculine 
as that Wisdom should be feminine ! 
But the Greeks were wise, and she 
revered their keen perception. 

Elisabeth Hoar said it seemed to 
her that Wisdom provided means. A 
hero might be inspired by Genius, but 
Wisdom provided his armor, taught him 
to distinguish the goal, and to perceive 
clearly the relation to it of any onward 
step. 

Margaret agreed to this, and 

William Story said that Genius 
was indebted to Wisdom for means 
of communication. Genius thinks words 
impertinent, but Wisdom apprehends 
its intuitions, and gives them shape. 

Margaret said further, that Wisdom 



80 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

must adopt instinctively the finest 
medium. 

It seemed to me that Wisdom not 
only gave power of communication, but 
power of attainment. Walter Scott was 
a good instance of the union of intuitive 
perception and human sagacity, but all 
these words about it cleared up nothing. 

Margaret then proposed that we 
should take up the attributes of Minerva, 
and so get at the facts. 

Mr. Ripley did not think it noble 
enough when she based Wisdom upon 
realities. 

William Story said Wisdom must 
have something to work upon. He 
thought Wisdom compared the intuitions 
of Genius with realities. 

Charles Wheeler thought the word 
actual would help them out of their 
difficulty. 

I wanted to quote Emerson to the 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 81 

effect that the Ideal is more Keal than 
the Actual. 

Margaret agreed with Mr. Wheeler, 
and said that by reality she understood 
anything incarnated, — whatever was 
tangible. She then went on to speak 
of the Sphinx. What was it? 

Elisabeth Hoar seemed surprised at 
the question. Was it not one thing to 
everybody ? 

Margaret called for her idea, but she 
would not give it. 

Margaret said that to herself it rep- 
resented the development of a thought, 
founding itself upon the animal, until it 
grew upward into calm, placid power. 
She revered these good ancients, who 
did not throw away any of the gifts of 
God ; who were neither materialists nor 
immaterialists, but who made matter 
always subservient to the highest ends 
of the Spirit. 



82 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

William White asked if the festivals 
of the Gods, the highest source of their 
influence over the people, did not show 
how little they had penetrated to the 
spirit of things? 

Margaret thought ambrosia and nec- 
tar were proper emblems of Divine 
Joy. They were not to be taken 
literally. 

" But," persisted White, " the great 
body of the people thought them so." 

William Story said, with happy 
grace, that the great body of the people 
might be excused for such a thought. 

Margaret enjoyed the pun, and said 
that the great Greek body was sensuous 
and ate, but that the Greek soul knew 
better than to suspect the Gods of open- 
ing their mouths. 

E. P. P. waked up at this moment, 
and asked what Margaret would say 
to Berkeley's theory. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 83 

Margaret said she did not know what 
it was ! 

E. P. P. said, the evolution of all 
things from the soul, the non-existence 
of matter. 

James F. Clarke thought it very 
difficult to decide how far spirit and 
matter were one. A man's identity was 
not in the particles which came and 
went every seven years, but in the spirit. 
Yet these particles constituted the wall 
of separation between himself and others. 
His identity was in his spirit. 

George Eipley begged leave to dis- 
agree. He thought we knew as much 
about matter as about spirit, and that 
Berkeley's theory was as good as any. 

Margaret said that if God created 
matter, of course it was evolved from 
spirit ; that matter could not be antago- 
nistic to that from which it was evolved. 



84 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

To express a complete idea, we had only 
to say, " Jehovah, I am." 

" Or," Charles Wheeler added, " to 
be silent." 

"Yes," said Margaret, "and in that 
lies the merit of Mythology. Every 
faculty was, according to that, an incom- 
plete statement. Therefore Mr. Ripley 
did wrong to confound Minerva with the 
Logos." 

E. P. P. did not see that Berkeley's 
statement was answered. 

William Story came in with another 
pun. " If Berkeley thought so, it was 
no matter ! " 

Some stupid person spoiled the wit by 
trying to explain it, and the question 
remained to us just as much matter as 
ever. 

They talked about the Sphinx again, 
yet said little. It holds more meaning 
in its passive womb than talk will ever 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 85 

play the midwife to. It was the child of 
the Destructive Element and Feeling, 
— Typhon and Echidna, — the human 
heart experienced in misfortune touched 
by death. Thought rooted in the actual 
and developed by tenderness was rooted 
in this figure. 

" Everybody knows that Wisdom 
stings," said Margaret, and so we went 
on to the serpent. 

Somebody spoke of the Greek Tartarus. 

Ida Russell thought its torment was 
not acute, but consisted of the depriva- 
tion of comforts. 

The wandering idleness of it would be 
intolerable to an active Greek, Elisa- 
beth Hoar thought, but more endura- 
ble than any device of a priesthood. As 
for our serpent, no one seemed to know r 
much about it. 

Margaret said that we owed it so 



86 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

much, that she felt in duty bound to 
know something of it. 

James F. Clarke said that the Chris- 
tian serpent was quite another thing. 

Everybody laughed at the idea of a 
Christian serpent. 

William White professed great ad- 
miration for the reptile. We should 
have had no Christianity but for its 
beguiling. 

Margaret agreed ! — and said she 
supposed everybody felt that. 

Mrs. Russell thought the casting of 
the skin very expressive. 

James F. Clarke gave Coleridge's 
exposition, to the effect that the serpent 
was the common understanding! It 
would touch and handle all things, and 
even sought to be as the Gods, knowing 
good from evil. Its undulating motion 
— its belly now on the ground, now off 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 87 

— expressed both the aspiration and the 
subserviency of the creature. 

Margaret asked if serpents ever swal- 
lowed their own tails ? 

Charles Wheeler said that must be 
an arbitrary form. 

Margaret replied, that she had been 
struck by the difference between the 
Mexican and the Greek serpent. The 
Mexican was folded back upon itself. 

Not always, I said. Its tail is some- 
times in its mouth, and the variations 
seem to be occasioned by the architec- 
tural necessity. 

James F. Clarke spoke of a Virginia 
snake that moves in a circle, and asked 
if when Mr. Emerson talked about 
" coming full circle " he was not think- 
ing of that? 

Margaret laughed, and declared that 
serpent must be of Yankee invention. 
iEsculapius bore two on his staff, Mer- 



88 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

cury two on his divining-rod, and the 
cock was also sacred to ^Esculapius. 

I asked if this did not indicate a cer- 
tain subjection of these Gods to Wisdom ? 

Some questions written on paper were 
here read. One asked why Minerva 
was born of the stroke of Vulcan, and 
why she was the patroness of weavers, 
and what that had to do with the story 
of Arachne. 

Margaret replied with ill temper to 
the first, that it was because Vulcan held 
the hammer, — to the second, that she 
did not know. 

But was there really so little meaning 
in the fact that Mechanic Art so minis- 
tered to Intelligent Will that she could 
afford to miss the point? 

She said we could see that Minerva 
was told to marry Vulcan, but declined ; 
would have nothing to do with the sooty 
cripple. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 89 

Sophia Eipley said, aptly enough, 
that Minerva had been changing her 
mind ever since ! 

Ida Russell thought that when Me- 
chanic Art was married to Beauty, it 
might charm even Wisdom. 

George Ripley said she might well 
have despised the brute force, but as it 
grew into something more noble, have 
learned to love it. Dr. Dana 1 was the 
servant of the Lowell corporation. In 
these days no corporation could exist 
without its man of science. His salary 
was a mere pittance, and when he made 
a discovery with which all Europe rang, 



1 Dr. Dana, a celebrated chemist, received a salary 
from the Merrimac Manufacturing Co. as consulting 
chemist. Through his experiments and practical skill, 
a radical change was made in the methods of dyeing 
and printing calicoes. This was in connection with the 
use of madder, and the Company claimed his discovery 
and allowed him no extra recompense. It will be per- 
ceived that Mr. Ripley got his supposed facts from the 
newspapers. 



90 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

he asked for a part of the profits. " We 
will consider/' said the soulless corpora- 
tion, and they decided that they had a 
legitimate right to all that could be 
made out of their servant! 

"Thus," I said, "Wisdom sows for 
the Mechanic Art to reap ? " 

"Exactly so," was the reply; "and 
this contains the essence of the Yankee 
philosophy. ,, 

The life of Wisdom was one long 
struggle for something beyond a merely 
serviceable knowledge. Bending alike 
to art and artisan, she still refused to 
love the latter till he had wooed Beauty 
to their common service. But Wisdom 
has of late married Vulcan. He no 
longer limps, and has washed his face in 
the springs of love and thought, and sits 
in holiday robes beside his bride. 

Somebody said that the story of 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 91 

Aracbne was an instance of the God- 
dess's vindictiveness. 

Margaret hoped that the vindictive- 
ness was a popular interpolation. If 
so, the story of Marsyas shows that 
she was malicious. She brought his mis- 
fortunes upon him. If her own voice 
was discordant, there was no reason why 
his voice should please ! 

" Divinities have a right to be indig- 
nant," said somebody. Did Margaret 
blush? 

In speaking of the artistic representa- 
tions of Minerva, Margaret said some 
beautiful things. Minerva was as tall 
and large as she could be, without being 
masculine. Her face was thoughtful and 
serene, without being sweet. Her eye 
was so full and clear that it had no need 
to be deep. 

The talk was closed by Margaret's 



92 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

reading the Essay that E. P. P. had sent 
in, and the criticisms upon it. 

E. P. P. began by speaking of the 
conservatism which disinclined Jupiter to 
the birth of Minerva. 

"Yes," Margaret said, "the good 
was always opposed to the better." 

E. P. P. then spoke of the Parthenon, 
upon which, according to the Homeric 
Hymn, the story of Minerva's birth was 
sculptured. 

Margaret said it had been diffi- 
cult to believe that the Greeks would 
put so ugly a thing upon their temple, 
but the ruins showed a Vulcan with his 
hammer in his hand, and the form of 
the Goddess hovering over the cloven 
skull. 

Why, asked E. P. P., did Ulysses 
represent Wisdom in the Odyssey? 

Margaret thought he represented 
the history of a thought in life, when 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 9 



he tired us all out with his long story, 
and so pushed us to decision. 

E. P. P. alluded to the different con- 
ceptions of Minerva in the Iliad and the 
Odyssey, and this led to the question 
of priority of composition. 

Margaret thought the Odyssey was 
written when Homer was young and 
romantic ; but E. P. P. and myself stood 
out stoutly for the precedence of the 
Iliad. I said, without the least bit of 
real knowledge, that I should not won- 
der if there were two centuries between 
the poems, they seemed to indicate such 
entirely different states of society ; but 
certainly the Odyssey was latest. 

Charles Wheeler said that the best 
scholars seemed all of one mind. The 
Iliad was written first by Homer, — the 
Odyssey long after by another hand. 

E. P. P. said that there was a gem 
which represented Minerva as married 



94 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

to a mortal, but she could tell nothing 
more about it. 

Jones Very said that when Wisdom 
falls into decay we call it Genius ! 

Does that mean that prophetic power 
fallen back from the moral nature to 
the intellect is dwarfed accordingly? 

CAROLINE W. HEALEY. 

March 27, 1841. 



V. 



April 2, 1841. 

The story of Venus and Cupid and 
Psyche was discussed. 

Margaret said that of Venus she had 
less to say than of either of the preceding 
Deities ! She was not the expression of 
a thought, but of a fact. She was the 
Greek idea of a lovely woman, — the 
best physical development of woman. 
When we have said, " It is," we have 
said all. The birth of Beauty was the 
only ideal thing about her. She sprang 
from the wave, from the flux and re- 
flux of things, from the undulating line. 
On this Venus, transitoriness had set its 
seal. As we look at her, we feel that 
she must change. Her loveliness is too 
fair to last. Her beauty would pass 



96 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

next moment. She could not live a 
year, we think, without losing something 
of her full grace. It was peculiarly 
Greek to create a beautiful symbol, and 
to pause in the symbol. The Greeks 
were very apt to do this. They did it 
effectually in the Goddess of Love. She 
was sportive in all her amours. They 
had no idea of an Everlasting Love. 
They enjoyed themselves too much to 
abstract themselves. Venus seemed to 
Margaret a merely human creature. She 
was not the type of Universal Beauty : 
the Greek eye was closed to that. Still, 
their own embodiment did not satisfy 
their own need. They filled out their 
ideal with Venus Urania, Hebe, and all 
the attendant Hours and Graces, yet 
were not satisfied. Then came the fable 
of Psyche and her three Cupids. Venus 
was only a pretty girl ! Her cestus, her 
doves, her pets, her jealousies, all betray 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 97 

it. The Venus Urania was more. She 
was the child of Celestial Light. Hebe 
was born of immortal bloom. To fill out 
the gaps in their conception, Eros, or 
Love in Sadness, Cupid a frolicsome boy, 
and the more noble, more creative Love 
which brooded over Chaos were evolved 
from their consciousness. Psyche, who 
did not appear until the age of Augustus, 
who was too modern to be mythological, 
yet glowing with mythic beauty, was 
only another evidence of their imperfect 
idea. Her story expresses more than 
that of Venus. It tells not only the 
story of human love, but represents the 
pilgrimage of a soul. The jealousy of 
Venus was that which the good must 
always feel toward the better which is 
to supersede it, and as soon as Psyche 
looked upon her sleeping lover she be- 
came immortal. The soul in the fulness 
of Love became conscious of Destiny. 



98 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

James Clarke asked what was the 
difference between the girl-mother — the 
Madonna — and the Greek Venus. 

Margaret replied, with more patience 
than I was capable of, that the Madonna 
represented more than passing womanly 
beauty. She was prophetic, and lived 
again in her child. 

Then, persisted James F., why was 
Vulcan the husband of Beauty, to which 
Margaret gave no satisfactory answer. 
He then gave his own thought, to 
which I can do no justice, although it 
was what I tried in vain to say at the 
last conversation. It amounted to this, 
— that in seeking for beauty we lose it, 
but in aiming at utility through hard 
labor we find perfect proportion — and 
consequently perfect beauty. He said 
that he and his sister Sarah had often 
spoken to each other about this, and he 
felt that the time would come when 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 99 

essays would be written about our ships, 
as we now write essays about the Pyra- 
mids and the Greek Art. Posterity 
might find the proof of our search after 
beauty in the graceful prow and swelling 
hold and tall, tapering mast or shrouds 
of shredded jet; in the bellying canvas 
and the patron saint which watches the 
wake from the stern. But we know 
that the ship, the most beautiful object 
in our modern world, was the product of 
labor, gradually evoked, according to the 
law of fitness, compass, and general pro- 
portion. To bring its form into a natural 
relation to wind and wave, was to find 
perfect harmony and beauty. At first 
the prow was too sharp, and the water 
had rushed over it; the hold was too 
shallow, and she sat ungracefully where 
she now rides as mistress. 

Emerson quoted some German author 
to the same effect. 



100 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Mr. Clarke said there was something 
in one of R. W. E.'s own Essays which 
expressed the same thing. 

Emerson laughed and said, " Very 
important authority," and would have 
changed the subject, when — 

William White said that it did not 
tally well with James Clarke's theory 
that the ugly steamer had succeeded the 
beautiful clipper. 

Mr. Clarke said the theory failed 
only because there was no noble end in 
view. The steamer was not intended to 
be in harmony with Nature. 

Emerson asked if the Greeks had no 
symbol for natural beauty. Several 
were suggested that he would not accept, 
but he finally took Diana on Charles 
Wheeler's suggestion. 

Wheeler then spoke of the birth of 
Venus. He said many writers thought 
the story as late as that of Psyche, and 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 101 

the line of Hesiod relating to it an 
interpolation. 

Margaret thought she should have 
suspected this if she had never heard 
it. The thought it expressed was too 
comprehensive to be in keeping with 
the remainder of her story. 

Charles Wheeler would not accept 
the criticism, but went on to talk about 
the marriage of Venus with Mars, which 
had amazed Olympus. 

Margaret said the Olympian Deities 
were like modern men, who talk to 
women forever about their softness and 
delicacy, until women imagine that the 
only good thing in man is a strong arm. 
The girl elopes with a red coat, and the 
indignant lords of creation wonder why 
she did not appreciate their modest merit 
and unobtrusive virtues. Poor Beauty 
weeps out the crimson stain upon her 
escutcheon in a long age of suffering. 



102 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

A laugh followed this bright sally, 
and then somebody said that Venus 
once married Mercury. 

Margaret declared that must be an 
interpolation, for there were no points 
of sympathy between the Goddess of 
beauty and the God of craft. 

James Clarke did not know about 
that; he thought that the finish and 
completeness of the late robbery of 
Davis, Palmer, & Co. constituted a kind 
of beaut// ! 

Margaret said that affair was alto- 
gether grand ; she had never heard of 
anything so Greek as Williamson's ex- 
claiming, " Gentlemen ! you will not de- 
prive me of the implements of my 
trade ? " She could not help respecting 
his impudence ! The Greeks ought to 
be respected for developing every human 
faculty into deity. She thought lying, 
stealing, and so forth only excesses of 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 103 

a good faculty; and so did the Greeks, 
for in their mistaken way they had 
deified Mercury. The Spartans taught 
their children to steal, and the Greeks 
universally acknowledged that to cheat 
was honorable if it could be concealed. 

I remembered the passage in the 
u Republic " where Polemarchus con- 
fesses that he had learned from Homer 
to admire Autolycus, grand sire of Ulys- 
ses, distinguished above all men for his 
thefts and oaths ! Thrasymachus said 
that the unjust were both prudent and 
good, if they were able to commit injus- 
tice to perfection ! Is the immortality of 
Autolycus the destiny of Williamson ? 

Wheeler said there certainly was a 
well authenticated marriage between 
Venus and Mercury. 

I could not help thinking it might be 
an astral connection that was indicated. 
On that remarkable day of his birth, 



104 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Mercury was not content with stealing 
the divining-rod from Apollo ; he took 
also the cestus from Venus, the voice 
from Neptune, the sword from Mars, 
the will from Zeus, and his tools from 
Vulcan ! Sagacity compassed all the 
deeps of divinity to reach its end. 

Ida Russell asked if Venus and 
Astarte were not the same. 

Margaret said Astarte belonged to 
the stars. 

Did not Venus, I wonder? But of 
course they are creations far asunder 
as the poles. 

Charles Wheeler thought Astarte 
and Venus Urania were the same. 

Ida said that could not be. The first 
statues of Astarte were rough blocks 
of wood, with veiled heads. 

So, I said, were all first statues of 
Deities; so that was no argument. 

When James Clarke asked Margaret 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 105 

to compare Venus with the Madonna, a 
curious talk arose between Alcott, Mar- 
garet, Charles Wheeler, and Emerson. 

Alcott wanted to know why Christ 
was not as much an impersonation of a 
human faculty as either of the Greek 
Deities ! 

Margaret said Jesus was not a 
thought. He was born on the earth, and 
lived out a thought. He was no abstrac- 
tion to her, but a brother. 

Alcott wanted to know whether a 
purer mythology, suited to the wants of 
coming time, might not arise from the 
mixed mythology of Persians, Greeks, 
and Christians ! 

A very confusing and tiresome talk 
arose thereupon, which Charles Wheeler 
smiled at, but did not join in, and which 
profited nobody. 

CAROLINE WELLS HEALEY. 

April 3, 1841. 



VI. 

CUPID AND PSYCHE. 

April 9, 1841. 

Margaret thought it would be very 
impertinent to begin by telling what 
everybody knew, — the old story of 
Cupid and Psyche. 

E. P. P. declared that Margaret never 
told it twice alike, and at last she yielded 
and said : — 

The beautiful young princess Psyche 
was envied by Venus, who sent Eros to 
destroy her ; but the God, finding Psyche 
wholly lovely, wedded her. They lived 
happily until Psyche began to doubt. 
Eros had told her that she must not 
seek to know him ; but curiosity pre- 
vailed over faith, and in looking at him 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 107 

as he slept she wounded and waked him. 
He left her in dismay ; and as a punish- 
ment the three trials which are the lot 
of mortals were awarded to her. She 
must sort grain, she must bring three 
drops from the river Styx, and must get 
the box of beauty from Proserpine. The 
birds helped her with the grain; but 
when she reached the banks of the Styx 
and stooped to fulfil the second task, she 
found the water too dark, too cold, and 
the eagle came to her aid. At the pros- 
pect of the third trial her soul sank ; she 
refused to undertake it; but, winning 
from one of the Gods the secret of self- 
dependence, she set off for Tartarus, 
gave the usual sop to Cerberus, and 
returned with her prize. But she was 
" possessed " with the idea that the 
treasures the box contained might re- 
store to her her husband's love, and she 
opened the box as she came. The 



108 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

noxious vapors which issued from it 
deprived her of consciousness, and she 
fell. Eros, who had flown to seek her 
as soon as his wound was healed, brought 
her the gift of Immortality which he had 
begged of Jupiter. 

Elisabeth Hoar asked what had 
become of Psyche's sisters, whose inter- 
ference was a striking point in the story. 

Margaret said she knew nothing of 
them, and wished Miss Hoar would tell 
us. Her own knowledge of the story was 
gained entirely from Raphael's original 
studies, and his frescos on the walls of a 
Roman palace. 

Elisabeth Hoar recapitulated. The 
parents of Psyche were ordered by the 
angry Venus to expose her upon a high 
mountain, when Zephyr carried her to 
the embraces of Love, who dwelt in the 
depths of a quiet valley hard by. Her 
sisters came to bewail her death, and 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 109 

Psyche begged Love to let Zephyr bring 
them to rejoice in her happiness. For 
some time he refused, telling her that it 
was not for her good, and that she could 
be happy without them. This our fool- 
ish Psyche would not believe, and at last 
they were permitted to come, only she 
must not tell them the little she knew 
about her husband. 

The first time Psyche had sent them 
away loaded with gifts. They had 
questioned her about her husband, and 
Psyche replied that he was only a lovely 
child. The year went round, and again 
the lovely bride longed for her sisters' 
presence. Again the God entreated her 
to be patient, assuring her that if they 
came it would only be to make her 
miserable. Psyche could not be quieted. 
Again they came, again they questioned. 
She forgot the story she had previously 
told, and replied that he was an old man, 



110 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

bent with years, but very kind to her. 
Then the envious women saw that Psyche 
was herself ignorant of his true nature. 
They told her that he was a dragon, and 
meant to devour her; that they had them- 
selves seen him as he passed through 
the fields. They begged her to take a 
knife and lamp and kill him as he slept. 
The frightened Psyche consented. 

The God was sleeping in radiant beauty 
at her side, and as she gazed upon him 
she drew an arrow from his quiver and 
carelessly scratched her finger. Impas- 
sioned by the wound, she bent over him, 
and a drop of scalding oil fell from her 
lamp. Angry and confused, the God 
awoke, and, irritated by the pain, flew 
away. Psyche clung to him; but she 
could not support herself, and he was too 
angry to hold her. She fell to the 
ground, and he, perched upon a neigh- 
boring tree, reproached her. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. Ill 

Margaret did not know this, but said 
she remembered that Psyche tried to 
drown herself. 

Elisabeth said that was later. She 
despaired, and threw herself into the 
river ; but the river pitied her, and bore 
her to the shore. Venus, growing tired 
of her guest, sent Mercury to advertise 
her. Psyche yielded to the terms of the 
Goddess, rendered herself up, and was 
busy sorting the gifts in the temple of 
Beauty when Custom was sent to berate 
her. 

This, I suppose, is a condensation of 
the lovely allegory of Apuleius in the 
second century of our era, but it seems 
to me Elisabeth made some additions. 

Margaret said that everybody had 
to contend with the meddlesome sisters. 
They were at the bottom of every fairy 
story, from that of Psyche to Beauty 
and the Beast. 



112 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Elisabeth Hoar said it was always 
with the young soul as it was with 
Psyche. It could give no account of 
the love which made it so happy. 

So, I said, every human heart shrivels 
under a curious touch. Love is angry 
that we wound him, and if he ever does 
return it is with Immortality in his hand. 
When custom berates, God accepts. 

James Clarke asked if there was not a 
celebrated statue of Cupid and Psyche. 

Margaret had only heard of Canova's, 
but James said he was sure there was 
one older. 

William Story asked if it were older 
than Apuleius, but James did not know. 

Ida Russell said it was wrong for 
Psyche to look. 

Yes, Margaret said, but her tempta- 
tions were strong ; and if they had not 
come through her sisters, they must have 
come through her own soul. Everything 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 113 

was produced by antagonism. This 
morning she had taken up Kreitzer, 
meaning to open the Greek volume, but 
took up the Indian. In that Mythology 
which William Story called deep and all- 
embracing there were the antagonist 
principles of Vishnu, or unclouded inno- 
cence, and Brahm, who could only become 
pure by wading through all wickedness. 
There seemed to be a need of sin, to 
work out salvation for human beings. 

Emerson said faith should work out 
that salvation. It was man's privilege 
to resist the evil, to strive triumphantly ; 
to recognise it — never ! Good was al- 
ways present to the soul, — was all the 
true soul took note of. It was a duty 
not to look! 

Margaret thought it the climax of 
sin to despair. She believed evil to be 
a good in the grand scheme of things. 
She would not recognize it as a blunder. 



114 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

She must consider its scope a noble one. 
In one word, she would not accept the 
world — for she felt within herself the 
power to reject it — did she not believe 
evil working in it for good! Man had 
gained more than he lost by his fall. 
The ninety-nine sheep in the parable 
were of less value than the " lost found," 
over which there was joy in heaven. 

E. P. P. spoke of the Tree of Life,— 
which would have made immortal those 
who ate of the Tree of Knowledge. 

Caroline Sturgis said that this pro- 
bation was what she could not compre- 
hend. "We began at the circumference, 
and if we fulfilled our destiny must end 
by being near the centre. How much 
better to have begun there ! Why could 
not God have made it so ? 

William Story began to say that 
God must seek the best good of all his 
creatures ; but Caroline interrupted him 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 115 

by saying that there was certainly more 
good at the centre than at the circum- 
ference. 

William White thought all this good, 
better, and best very puzzling. 

Margaret asked Caroline if she could 
not see probation to be a good, as she 
had herself defined it? 

Are we better then, than God ? asked 
Caroline. 

Not better, replied Margaret, for we 
cannot compare dissimilar things. 

William White asked if any one could 
be more than good, more than pure. 

William Story said perfection had 
its degrees ! 

White said, How can you progress 
after you have reached your goal ? 

As if any live man ever did reach his 
goal! said I. 

Is there any progress for God ? re- 
torted he. 



116 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Not any, for that is a contradiction in 
terms, I said ; but surely you conceive of 
it for souls in heaven ? 

Margaret said something about the 
Gospel injunction to be perfect even as 
our Father in Heaven is perfect. Does 
not " even as " mean " after the pattern 
of"? Does it involve the nature, as 
well as the degree? 

Emerson interrupted quickly, "We 
are not finite." 

Everybody smiled ; but the best an- 
swer to this is found in the fact, that 
we never conceive of ourselves as infinite 
and at rest, — only as reaching after the 
Infinite in our motion. 

White said to Caroline Sturgis, " If 
evil brings knowledge of good, is it 
not a gain ? " 

William Story talked nobly, some- 
thing to this effect : That good and 
evil were related terms. If both did 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 117 

not exist, neither could, antagonism be- 
ing the spring of most things in the 
universe. 

Margaret went back to Cupid, and 
said that in Raphael's original studies 
Cupid was always a boy. — in his frescos, 
a youth, almost a man. She spoke of 
the difference of expression which he 
gave to his Venus and his Psyche, 
especially in the eye. That of Psyche 
was deep and thoughtful. The distinc- 
tion extended to their attendant Cupids, 
and was most marked in the Psyche 
when she takes the cup of Immortality 
from her husband. 

Margaret wanted to pass on to 
Diana, but there were too many clergy- 
men in the company. Everybody was 
interested in somebody nearer at hand, 
and views of the unchanging Providence 
were next presented. 

Margaret said God was the back- 



118 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

ground against which all creation was 
thrown. 

William Story asked if she did 
not think He was greater than his 
creatures ? 

"Always beyond/' was Margaret's 
reply. 

Creation, Story said, was rather the 
exponent of a Love which must bless, 
than of an activity which must act. It 
was a Paternal power that ruled, not an 
autocratic power which fathered us. 

Margaret said that the story of Cupid 
and Psyche was the story of redemption. 
It contained the seeds of the doctrine of 
election, — saving by grace, and so on ! 

A good many queer things were said 
on various points touched by this. 

Emerson said, that to imagine it 
possible to fall was to hegin to fall. 

E. P. P. got into a little maze trying 
to introduce Margaret and R W. E. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 119 

to each other, — a consummation which, 
however devoutly to be wished, will 
never happen ! 

James Clarke told her that she was 
just where Paul was when he said, 
" What then ? Shall I sin, that Grace 
may the more abound?" 

Emerson said the woodlands could tell 
us most about Diana, about whom we 
contrived to say very little. The omis- 
sion of orgies in her worship was dwelt 
upon. Her pure and sacred character 
with the Athenians was compared to 
that of the Diana of Ephesus, whose 
orgies were not unusual, and who was 
considered as a bountiful mother rather 
than as a virgin huntress. 

Ida Russell said that her Mythology 
accused Diana of being the mother of 
fifty sons and fifty daughters ! 

Margaret laughed, and said that cer- 
tainly was Diana of Ephesus ! 



120 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

The maddening influence of moonlight 
was commented upon, as if it were a 
fable ; but William Story said it was a 
fact. In tropical regions very sad con- 
sequences resulted from long gazing on 
the moonlight or sleeping in it. In one 
town he had known sixteen persons 
bewildered in this way. 

William White said that in a late 
book of Nichols it was contended that 
the moon had some light of her own, 
because she shows a brazen color even 
under eclipse, when the dark side of the 
earth is toward her. But why may she 
not gather stellar light from the whole 
universe, as the earth seems to ? 

Sallie Gardiner said something to 
William Story in a low voice. He 
laughed, and said he had been think- 
ing of the consequences of his theory. 

Margaret asked what he was talking 
about. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 121 

Story said it was an application of 
eclipses to his theory that love was the 
motive to creation. If the sun is bene- 
ficent truth shorn of its beams, it would 
be like the moon, no better than brass ! 

Caroline Sturgis asked why the 
Mahomedans bore the crescent. 

William White said because of some 
change in the moon which occurred at 
the time of the Hegira. 

William Story said that the wor- 
shippers at Mecca carried the crescent 
before Mahomet's time. There is a cres- 
cent on the black stone. 

Both stories may be true. There is 
certainly a crescent on the old Byzan- 
tine coin, or besant. 

Ida Russell said something about 
Diana being wedded. 

This reminded E. P. P. of Minerva's 
marriage, discussed last week. She said 
that Charles Wheeler had seen the gem 



122 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

of which she then spoke, and that Nep- 
tune was the favored suitor. 

William Story said the Greeks could 
not wed Neptune to Diana, for the tides 
were too low in the Mediterranean! 

C. W. HEALEY. 
April 10, 1841. 



VII. 

PLUTO AND TARTARUS. 

April 15, 1841. 

Margaret said very little about Pluto. 
On the first evening she had called him 
the depth of things, and James Clarke 
now had a good deal to say upon the 
three ideas which she thought pervaded 
the Greek mythology, — the source, the 
depth, and the extent or flow of thought. 
He said that this distinction had struck 
him very forcibly when Margaret first 
mentioned it. We speak of widely dif- 
fused thought, of aspiring and profound 
thought ; of sympathetic, exalted, or deep 
feeling, — and this seemed to exhaust 
language. It was through the depths of 



124 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

feeling and experience that we came to 
the profound of thought. 

E. P. P. said, " There is no genius in 
happiness." Not a very intelligible 
statement. 

Margaret said, "There is nothing 
worth knowing that has not some pen- 
alty attached to it. We pay it the more 
willingly in proportion as we grow wise. 
Depth, altitude, diffusion, are the three 
births of Time. It is this which makes 
the German cover the operations of the 
miner with a mystic veil. Bostonians 
laugh at the Germans because they 
think." 

Wheeler liked what Mr. Clarke said, 
and added that there was meaning in the 
Irish phrase, " Lower me up." 

Margaret said that all the punish- 
ments of Tartarus expressed baffled ef- 
fort, the penalty least endurable to the 
active Greek. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 125 

Mr. Mack thought it singular that in 
every nation where the belief in Tartarus 
had prevailed, an exact locality had al- 
ways been assigned to it. 

William White said that, so long as 
anybody could point out the locality of 
the garden of Eden, we had no need to 
smile at the locality of a Tartarus or an 
Elysium. 

I do not think these " myths " belong 
to the same class. 

Charles Wheeler quoted Champol- 
lion to the effect that the Styx was only 
a small river flowing between the Temple 
at Thebes and a neighboring " place 
of tombs." The ferryman was named 
Charon, and the Egyptian habit of judg- 
ing the dead probably gave rise to the 
rest of the fable. 

Margaret said, " This was very 
natural." She asked Mr. Wheeler the 
meaning of certain names. 



126 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Phlegethon, he answered, meant burn- 
ing fire ; Acheron, anguish. 

Why did not somebody say that the 
lifeless current of the Styx first tempted 
Homer to give it to the Infernals ? It is 
in reality a river of Epeiros. 

The Styx, Wheeler said, was a cold 
unhealthy stream, like that which caused 
the death of Alexander. It flowed 
slowly through Acadia, but was supposed 
to take its rise in Hades. Lethe is a 
river near the Syrtus in Africa. It dis- 
appears in the sand, but rises again. 
Hence its name. 

Mr. Wheeler had some difficulty in 
explaining certain inconsistencies in the 
poets. 

Mr. Clarke quoted the remark of 
Achilles (?) concerning Elysium, — that 
a day of hard labor on earth was prefer- 
able to an eternity of pleasure in Elysian 
fields ! 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 127 

Margaret said that in Elysium, as in 
Tartarus, souls waited. These restless 
Greeks could do nothing. They were 
cut off from action, which was their 
delight. All their punishments seem to 
consist of frustrated effort, — the conse- 
quence of some presumption. Tantalus 
was ever thirsty and ever famished be- 
cause he had aspired to nectar and 
ambrosia. Ixion, who would have scaled 
the heavens, was condemned to incessant 
revolution upon a wheel, which never 
paused yet never accomplished anything. 
The Danaides, who murdered the love 
which wooed them, were doomed to fill 
a broken vessel with water which as 
constantly escaped. Sisyphus, who had 
never labored except for a selfish end, 
was to roll a stone up hill, which as con- 
stantly rolled down, — fit emblem of all 
selfish labor. As for Tityrus, who sought 
to violate the secrets of Nature, the 
vulture fed always upon his entrails. 



128 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Wheeler said this did not represent 
frustrated effort. 

Margaret said, No : this was re- 
morse ; but there was an admirable 
instance of the former given by Goethe, 
of a man who wove rope from the 
sedges which grew upon the banks of 
Lethe, for an ass who continually de- 
voured it. The moral seemed to be that 
the ass could just as well have eaten 
them unwoven. Goethe goes on to say 
that the Greeks only thought that the 
poor man had a prodigal wife, but that 
the moderns would look deeper and see 
more in the fable. 

We all weave sedges for asses to eat, 
thought I. 

Margaret seemed to think that every 
heart might have an experience which 
would correspond to Tartarus. Every 
hero must visit it at least once. 

I suggested Pluto, Persephone, the 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 129 

Fates, the Gorgons, the Furies, and 
Cerberus. Pluto was equal to Neptune 
and Jupiter. 

Margaret continued : Hades was not 
given to Pluto to mark defective char- 
acter, but simply as his kingdom. His 
wants were all supplied. The bride 
Olympus refused him he was permitted 
to steal from earth while she gathered 
flowers. Persephone, seed of all things, 
must dwell in the dark; but another 
legend tells us that if she had been 
willing to leave her veil, she might 
have stolen away. There was a mean- 
ing in her being forbidden to eat in the 
infernal regions. Fate said, " Do not 
touch what you don't want." Psyche 
was forbidden to partake of the regal 
banquet Persephone spread. Seeking 
for Immortality, this soul, like every 
other, must be content to eat bitter 
bread. 



130 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

There was then a talk about Cerberus 
and the Gorgons. 

Mr. Clarke said that in the New 
Testament the dog seemed to stand for 
popular prejudice. The swine stood for 
what could not, the dog for what would 
not, be convinced. 

Yes, Margaret said, the wolf is a 
misanthropic dog. He has little dignity. 

Ida Russell said Cerberus stood for 
the temperaments. 

Well, Margaret said, that being so, 
she liked the Greeks for making no 
allowance for the lymphatic. To what, 
she continued, do we offer the first sop, 
as we pass through life ? As for the 
Gorgons, every one, she thought, would 
find his own interpretation of them. To 
her there was no Gorgon but apathy ; 
there is nothing in creation that will so 
soon turn a live man into stone. These 
Gorgons were three women, who used 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 131 

one eye and one tooth between them, — 
except Medusa, who was beautiful and 
perfect. Her hair had provoked the 
envy of Minerva, and was changed into 
serpents. Margaret had a copy of a 
gem, which Marion Dwight had made 
for her, which showed this. 

E. P. P. asked if Perseus did not en- 
deavor to show Medusa her own head. 

Margaret said that might well rouse 
her! 

Charles Wheeler explained. Per- 
seus only used a mirror given him by 
Minerva to avoid looking at the Gorgon. 

Caroline Sturgis said that the old 
woman who keeps house for Helen in 
the second part of " Faust " was a Gorgon 
to her. 

This dragged a critical analysis of 
the " Faust" forward. 

Margaret said the Seeker represents 
the Spirit of the Age. He never sinned 



132 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

save by yielding, and yet he was em- 
phatically saved by grace. It was diffi- 
cult to see what Goethe meant until he 
got to the Tower of the Middle Ages. 
That made all clear. 

Charles Wheeler said, the reader 
would a great deal rather that Faust 
went to the Devil than not! 

Margaret defended Goethe's way of 
exhibiting character, of which Wilhelm 
Meister was an instance. Goethe said 
to himself, What should I do with a 
hero in such rascally society ? Meister 
preferred the Brahmal experience. 

E. P. P. asked if this moral indiffer- 
ence was well ? 

Margaret replied, that it was just as 
frightful as any other Gorgon. If we 
are to have a purely intellectual devel- 
opment, it was well for a man like Goethe 
to represent it. To choose fairly be- 
tween evil and good, the intellect must 
regard both with indifference.. 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 133 

Somebody asked how the Gorgon's 
head came to be on the ^Egis of 
Minerva ? 

If Apathy is the Gorgon, snrely Wis- 
dom needs it ! 

Then we began to talk about Theseus 
in connection with Tartarus. Why 
should he sit forever on a stone ? 

Margaret thought he represented 
reform ! 

Mr. Mack said reform checked itself 
by its own fanaticism. 

Wheeler, in this connection, asked 
after the Greek notion of accountability. 

Margaret did not think the Greeks 
had any. 

Wheeler assured her to the contrary, 
and told anecdotes to prove it. He 
spoke of the fatal transmission of guilt in 
one family, generation after generation. 

Margaret said the Greeks never 
rejected facts. 



134 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Ida Russell spoke of the last King of 
Athens, Codrus, supposed to have been 
punished for the crimes of his ancestors. 

Wheeler said that when the Greeks 
killed some ambassadors, they felt so 
sure that Heaven would avenge the sin 
that they sent two citizens to expiate 
it ; but Darius, to whom they were sent, 
refused to release the Greeks from their 
impending doom. 

Margaret said the moment such a 
supposition was started, there were 
plenty of facts to sustain it. Orestes 
is the purified victim of his family. 
The old Greeks had made no complete 
statement of their destiny or their 
accountability. 

E. P. P. said they had made it in art. 

C. W. HEALEY. 
April 16, 1841. 



VIII. 

MERCURY AND ORPHEUS. 

April 22, 1841. 

Margaret said it surprised her that 
young men did not seek to be Mercuries. 
She said that one of the ugliest young 
men that she knew had become so en- 
raptured with one of Raphael's Mercu- 
ries, that he confessed to her that he 
was never alone without trying to assume 
its attitude before the glass. She said 
she could not help laughing at the image 
he suggested, an ugly figure in high- 
heeled boots and a strait-coat in the 
act of flying, commissioned with every 
grace from Heaven to men ! but she 
respected the feeling, and thought every 
sensitive soul must share it. 



136 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Emerson had sent Sophia Peabody 
several fine engravings. One of these, 
a Correggio, represented a woman of 
Parma as a Madonna. It might give 
any woman a similar desire. 

William Story, Frank Shaw, Mr. Mack 
and his friends, Mrs. Ripley, Ida Russell, 
and Mrs. S. G. Ward were all missing 
to-night. 

Margaret said that she was sorry 
she had allowed our subject to embrace 
so much. The Grecian Mercury seemed 
to mean so little that she had not thought 
of the depth and difficulty connected 
with the Egyptian Hermes. Among 
the Greeks, Ceres, Persephone, and Juno 
represent the productive faculties, Jupi- 
ter and Apollo the divine, and Mercury 
simply the human understanding, the 
God of eloquence and of thieves. 

Marianne Jackson thought it strange 
that he should be at once the God of 
persuasion and the Deity of theft! 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 137 

Margaret said eloquence was a kind 
of thieving! 

Did the Greeks so consider it? asked 
Marianne. 

Margaret said, Yes, more than any 
nation in the world, and taught their 
children so to do ; and in fact such 
mental recognitions were what dis- 
tinguished the nation from all other 
peoples. 

The Egyptian Hermes represented the 
whole intellectual progress of man. If 
one made a discovery it was signed Her- 
mes, and under that name transmitted 
to posterity. Hence the forty volumes 
of Hermetic theology, philosophy, and 
so on. Individuals were merged in the 
God. Hermes was always the mediator, 
the peacemaker, and it was in this rela- 
tion that the beautiful story was told of 
the caduceus. Mercury has originally 
only the divining-rod which Apollo had 
given him, but, finding two serpents 



138 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

fighting one day, he pacified them, and 
had ever after the right to bear them 
embracing on his rod. There was an- 
other story, Margaret said, which she 
could not understand, — the story of his 
obtaining the head of the Ibis from 
Osiris. Hermes kept the first or out- 
side gates of Heaven, a significant fact 
typically considered. 

I am sure there is something' in 
Heeren's researches about the Ibis 
story, but Caroline Sturgis said, No. 

William White asked if the God gave 
the name to the planet ? 

Margaret said, Yes ; and it was given 
because it stood nearest the sun. 

E. P. P. said Plutarch had written some- 
thing about Hermes in his " Morals." 

Margaret said, Perhaps so, but she 
did n't know, as she never could read 
them. Plutarch went round and round 
a story; presented all the corners of it, 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 139 

told all the pretty bits of gossip he could 
find, instead of penetrating to its secret. 
So she preferred his anecdotes of Heroes 
to his Parallels or Essays. 

I said, in surprise, how much I liked 
the "Morals." 

"Yes," Margaret said, "even Emer- 
son paid the book the high compliment 
of calling it his tuning-key, when he 
was about to write." 

E. P. P. said Coleridge was her own 
tuning-key, and asked Margaret if she 
had no such friendly instigator. 

Margaret said she could keep up no 
intimacy with books. She loved a book 
dearly for a while ; but as soon as she 
began to look out a nice Morocco cover 
for her favorite, she was sure to take a 
disgust to it, to outgrow it. She did not 
mean that she outgrew the author, but 
that, having received all from him that 
he could give her, he tired her. That 



140 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

had even been the case with Shakespeare ! 
For several years he was her very life ; 
then she gave him up. About two 
years ago she had occasion to look into 
" Hamlet," and then wished to refresh 
her love, but found it impossible. It 
was the same with Ovid, whose luxuriant 
fancy had delighted her girlhood. She 
took him up, and read a little with all 
her youthful glow ; but it would not last. 
Friends must part, but why need we 
part from our books ? She regretted her 
oddity, for she lost a great solace by it. 

She proceeded to contrast the Apollo 
with Mercury. In Egypt, Hermes was 
the experimental Deity, the Brahma. 

Caroline Sturgis asked what the 
Hermes on the door-posts of the Athe- 
nian houses meant. 

Margaret thought that he posed 
there as a messenger, an opener of the 
gates merely, and then spoke of several 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 141 

Mercuries by Raphael. One she knew, 
so full of beauty and grace that it 
seemed a single trumpet-tone. Another 
all loveliness was handing the cup of life 
to Psyche. She wondered that such 
symbols as Apollo and Mercury did not 
inspire all young men with ardor, and 
make them something better than young 
men usually are. 

William White said Apollo was too 
far beyond the average man to do this ; 
but that Mercury, graceful and vivacious, 
would naturally attract the attention. 

Margaret asked if he would be an 
easier model to imitate, and then repeated 
her anecdote about the ugly youth who 
longed to be a Mercury. 

William said that if his faith had been 
strong enough, the transformation might 
have taken place. 

Query — what is meant by strong 
enough ? 



142 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Margaret spoke of the Egyptian 
Osiris in his relation to Hermes, and 
said that she did not like him to be 
confounded with the Apollo. He was 
in reality the Egyptian Jove. 

This led me to speak of the Orphic 
Hymn in which Apollo is addressed as 
" immortal Jove." 

Margaret said she had discovered 
very little about Orpheus. In relation 
to the five points of Orphic theology, she 
had lately read a posthumous leaf from 
Goethe's Journal. The existence of a 
Daemon seemed to be a favorite idea 
of his. He did not believe with Emerson 
that all things were in our own souls, 
but that they existed in the original souls, 
(does anybody know what that means?) 
and we must go out to seek them. This 
notion Goethe thought verified by his 
own experience. Goethe's works, Mar- 
garet thought, had more variety than 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 143 

anybody's except Shakespeare's. His 
powers of observation seemed to con- 
dense his genius. 

William White wondered why 
Goethe showed such tenderness for 
Byron. 

Margaret said that in every impor- 
tant sense Byron was his very opposite ; 
but Goethe hardly looked upon him as 
a responsible being. He was rather the 
instrument of a higher power. He was 
the exponent of his period. 

Sophia Peabody had been making a 
drawing of Crawford's Orpheus at the 
Athenaeum. It was here brought down 
for me to see. 

At Sophia's request, Margaret re- 
peated a sonnet she had written on 
it. She recited it wretchedly, but the 
sonnet was pleasant. 

I spoke of Bode's Essay on the Orphic 
Poetry, and sympathized in his view of 



144 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

the spuriousness of the Hymns. They 
might have been signed Orpheus, how- 
ever, as other things were signed Hermes, 
simply because they were exponents of 
Orphic thought. 

Margaret dilated on this Orphic 
thought. 

I quoted Proclus in his Commentary 
on Plato's " Republic " as follows: — 

" Mars perpetually discerns and nourishes, 
and constantly excites the contrarieties of the 
Universe, that the world may exist perfect 
and entire in all its parts ; but requires the 
assistance of Venus, that he may bring order 
and harmony into things contrary and dis- 
cordant. 

"Vulcan adorns by his art the sensible 
universe, which he fills with certain natural 
impulses, powers, and proportions; but he 
requires the assistance of Yenus, that he 
may invest material effects with beauty, and 
by this means secure the comeliness of the 
world. Yenus is the source of all the har- 
mony and analogy in the Universe, and of 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 145 

the union of form with matter, connecting 
and comprehending the powers of the ele- 
ments. Although this Goddess ranks among 
the supermundane divinities, yet her princi- 
pal employment consists in beautifully illumi- 
nating the order, harmony, and communion 
of all mundane concerns." 

I asked Margaret if this was not 
something like her own thought, — this 
Venus, for example, was it not better 
than that we got from Greek art? 

She said it was the primal idea, but 
she did not attach much importance to 
chronology. Philosophy must decide the 
age of a thought. 

I gave her as good an abstract of 
Bode's theory as I could. 

William White took the drawing of 

Orpheus from me, and, while speaking 

of its beauty, said it always made him 

angry to think of the deterioration of 

the human figure. He thought it ought 
10 



146 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

to have been prevented, and that his 
ancestors had deprived him of his 
rights. 

Upon this, Margaret entered into 
a lively disquisition upon masculine 
beauty. She said the best specimens 
of it she had ever seen were a South- 
ern oddity named Hutchinson and some 
Cambridge students who came from 
Virginia. 

We lost a finer talk to-night through 
the inclemency of the weather. Wheeler 
was to have come with a great stock of 
information. Had he done so, I need 
not have quoted Bode or Proclus. 

CAROLINE W. HEALEY. 
April 23, 1841. 



IX. 

HERMES AND ORPHEUS. 

April 29, 1841. 

We did not have a very bright talk. 
There were few present, and we had only 
the subject of last week. Margaret 
did not speak at length. Wheeler had 
been ill, and his physician prescribed 
light diet of both body and mind. 

Somebody spoke of Mercury sweeping 
the courts of the Gods, but that sug- 
gested nothing to Margaret. 

Sarah Shaw had a pin, with a Mer- 
cury on it, represented as holding the 
head of a goat. 

Margaret had never seen anything 
that would explain it, and there was 
some dispute about it. 



148 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

E. P. P. said that, according to the 
Orphic Hymn, Mercury sought the love 
of Dryope under the form of a goat. 
Pan was the fruit of that amour. In 
this form also he wooed Diana. 

We wandered from our subject a little, 
to hear Mr. Mack talk about the Gorgons. 
He thought they stood for the three sides 
of human nature. Medusa, the chief 
care-taker, the body, was the only one 
not immortal, and the only one beautiful. 
Stheno and Euryale, wide-extended force 
and wide-extended scope, represented 
spirit and intellect, essentially immortal. 
The changing of Medusa's curls (or ele- 
ments of strength) into serpents repre- 
sented the fall. It was not the Gorgons 
who had but one eye and one tooth be- 
tween them, but three sister guardians, 
whom Perseus was compelled to destroy 
before he could reach Medusa. 

Mr. Mack did not tell us why human 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 149 

nature so divided had a certain petrify- 
ing power ! 

E. P. P. thought the intellect, not the 
body, was the care-taker. Mr. Mack tried 
in vain to explain, owing, I think, to his 
German misconception of words. Cer- 
tainly the five senses are the providers, 
which was what he must have meant. 

Margaret liked his theory, because 
there was a place in it for sin ! She 
disliked failure. Perhaps we all had per- 
ceived her attachment to evil ! Not that 
she wished men to fall into it, but it must 
be accepted as one means of final good. 

The only copies of Bode belong to 
Edward Everett and Theodore Parker. 
Neither is at this moment to be had. 
The talk turned on the age of the 
Orphic idea. 

The Orphic Hymns, Wheeler said, 
were merely hymns of initiation into the 
Orphic mysteries. They were altered by 
every successive priesthood, and finally 



150 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

by the Christian Platonists. Those now 
remaining were undoubtedly their work. 
Perhaps the ancient formulas were still 
hidden in them. We know the beauti- 
ful story of Orpheus. If he indeed rep- 
resents many, yet all that has been said 
of him is also true of one. 

Mr. Mack declared that Eurydice 
represented the true faith! She was 
killed by an envenomed serpent, which 
might possibly stand for an enraged 
priesthood ! 

I got a little impatient here, and said 
I did not care to know about the Hymns ; 
but the Orphic idea, which made Scaliger 
speak of the Hymns as the " Liturgy of 
Satan," — how old was that ? 

Margaret could not guess why he 
called them so. 

Charles Wheeler said that, since 
they made a heathen worship attractive, 
perhaps he fancied them a device of the 
Evil One ! 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 151 

Too great a compliment to Scaliger, I 
thought. 

Margaret had no objection to Orpheus 
as crowning an age ; she liked that mul- 
titudes should produce one. 

Charles Wheeler said that Carlyle 
had spoken of Orpheus as standing in 
such a relation to the Greeks as Odin 
bore to the Scandinavians. 

Margaret said at this point (I don't 
see with what pertinency) that Carlyle 
displeased her by making so much of 
mere men. 

James Clarke quoted Milton, speak- 
ing of himself among the revellers of 
the Stuart Court, as like Orpheus among 
the Bacchanals. 

I said that Bode placed Homer in the 
tenth century before Christ, and Orpheus 
in the age just preceding, say the thir- 
teenth century before. 

Mr. Mack thought all that mere 
conjecture. 



152 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

I told him it made a good deal of 
difference to me whether the Orphic 
Mythology came before or after that of 
Homer. Had man grown out of the 
noble and into the base idea ? Was all 
our knowledge only memory ? Had the 
Orphic fancies no beauty till the Pla- 
tonic Christians shaped them ? 

Margaret responded to what I said, 
that she did not like a mind always 
looking back. 

E. P. P. said there was a great deal of 
consolation in it. Memory was proph- 
ecy. She did n't like such a mind, 
but since she happened to have it she 
wanted support for it. 

Mr. Mack said all history offered such 
support. 

Charles Wheeler did n't like to 
believe it, but felt that he must. He 
spoke of the Golden Age. 

Margaret said every nation looked 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 153 

back to this ; but, after all, it was only 
the ideal. The past was a curtain on 
which they embroidered their pictures 
of the present. 

William White said that all great 
men looked to the appreciation of the 
future. We are too near to the present. 

Margaret agreed. 

E. P. P. said, all the science of Europe 
could not offer anything like the old 
Egyptian lore. 

Margaret said the moderns needed 
the assistance of a despotic government. 

Charles Wheeler spoke of the mon- 
uments in Central America; but before 
he could utter what was in his mind, 
Margaret interrupted, saying that all 
the greatness of the Mexicans only suf- 
ficed to show their littleness. We might 
have lost in grandeur and piety, but 
we had gained in a thousand tag-rag 
ways. 



154 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Mrs. Farrar whispered to me, "Write 
that down ! " and I have done it. 

Charles Wheeler said that late dis- 
coveries proved that there was a com- 
plete knowledge of electricity among 
the ancients. There were lightning-rods 
on the temple at Jerusalem, and they 
are described by Josephus, who however 
does not know what they are. 

Margaret and I clung to the " tag- 
rag " gain. 

Charles Wheeler agreed with me in 
thinking the Orphic Hymns of very late 



origin. 



Margaret could not see the use of 
creating a race of giants to prepare the 
earth for pygmies ! If these must exist, 
why not in some other sphere ? She 
referred to the beautiful Persian fable. 
The first was God, of course ; since man 
may always revert to Him, what matter 
about the giants? 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 155 

I said that primitive ages were sup- 
posed to be innocent rather than great. 

Margaret said the Persian fable bore 
to the same point as the Vishnu and 
Brahma. It was antagonism that pro- 
duced all things. The universe at first 
was one Conscious Being, — " I am ; " no 
word, no darkness, no light. This Con- 
scious Being needed to know itself, and 
it passed into darkness and light and a 
third being, — the Mediator between the 
two. This Trinity produced ideals, — 
men, animals, things ; and after a period 
of twelve thousand years all return 
again into the One, who has gained 
by the phenomena only a multiplied 
consciousness. 

" Were they merged? " asked Charles 
Wheeler. 

Margaret said, " No ! once created, 
they could not lose identity." 

c. w. healey. 

April 30, 1841. 



X. 

BACCHUS AND THE DEMIGODS. 

May 6, 1841. 

Few present. Our last talk, and we 
were all dull. For my part, Bacchus 
does not inspire me, and I was sad 
because it was the last time that I 
should see Margaret. She does not love 
me ; I could not venture to follow her 
into her own home, and I love her so 
much ! Her life hangs on a thread. 
Her face is full of the marks of pain. 
Young as I am, I feel old when I look 
at her. 

Margaret spoke of Hercules as rep- 
resenting the course of the solar year. 
The three apples were the three seasons 
of four months each into which the 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 157 

ancients divided it. The twelve labors 
were the twelve signs 

E. P. P. accepted this, and spoke of 
Bryant's book, which Margaret did not 
like. 

Margaret said Bryant forced every 
fact to be a point in a case. Bending 
each to his theory, he falsified it. She 
wished English people would be content, 
like the wiser Germans, to amass classi- 
fied facts on which original minds could 
act. She liked to see the Germans so 
content to throw their gifts upon the 
pile to go down to posterity, though 
the pile might carry no record of the 
collectors. She spoke of Kreitzer, whose 
book she was now reading, who coolly 
told his readers that he should not 
classify a second edition afresh, for his 
French translator had done it well 
enough, and if readers were not satis- 
fied with his own work, they must have 



158 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

recourse to the translation. This she 
thought was as it ought to be. 

James Clarke said it always vexed 
him to hear ignorant people speak of 
Hercules as if he were a God, and of 
Apollo and Jupiter as if they might at 
some time have been men. 

Margaret said, Yes, the distinction 
between Gods and Demigods was that 
the former were the creations of pure 
spontaneity, and the latter actually ex- 
istent personages, about whose heroic 
characters and lives all congenial stories 
clustered. 

J. F. C. did not like the statues of 
Hercules ; the brawny figure was not to 
his taste. 

Margaret thought it majestic. She 
said he belonged properly to Thessaly, 
and was identified with its scenery. She 
told several little stories about him. 
That of his sailing round the rock of 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 159 

Prometheus, in a golden cup borrowed 
of Jupiter, was the least known. She 
told the story from Ovid, the glowing 
account of his death, of the recognition 
by delighted Jove. She said Words- 
worth's " Tour in Greece " gave her 
great materials for thought. 

Then she turned to Bacchus. 

To show in what manner she supposed 
Bacchus to be the answer or complement 
to Apollo, she mentioned the statement 
of some late critic upon the relation of 
Ceres and Persephone to each other. 

Persephone was the hidden energy, 
the vestal fire, vivifying the universe. 
Ceres was the productive faculty, ex- 
ternal, bounteous. They were two 
phases of one thing. It was the same 
with Apollo and Bacchus. Apollo was 
the vivifying power of the sun ; its genial 
glow stirred the earth, and its noblest 
product, the grape, responded. 



160 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

She spoke of the Bacchanalian festi- 
vals, of the spiritual character attributed 
to them by Euripides, showing that ori- 
ginally they were something more than 
gross orgies. 

Mrs. Clarke (Ann Wilby) said that 
they licensed the wildest drunkenness 
in Athens. 

I said that was at a later time 
than Euripides undertook to picture. 
Were they identical with the Orphic ? 
Did Orpheus really bring them from 
Egypt? 

Margaret would accept that for a 
beginning. 

E. P. P. thought that next winter 
we might have a talk about Roman 
Mythology. 

Margaret liked the idea, and James 
Clarke seemed to accept it for the whole 
party. He said that he had never felt 
any interest in the Greek stories, until 



MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 161 

Margaret bad made them the subject of 
conversation. 

E. P. P. said she bad felt excessively 
ashamed all through that she knew so 
little. 

Margaret said no one need to feel 
so. It was a subject that might exhaust 
any preparation. Still, she wished we 
would study ! She had herself enjoyed 
great advantages. Nobody's explana- 
tions had ever perplexed her brain. She 
had been placed in a garden, with a 
great pile of books before her. She 
began to read Latin before she read 
English. For a time these deities were 
real to her, and she prayed : " God ! 
if thou art Jupiter ! " etc. 

James Clarke said he remembered 
her once telling him that she prayed to 
Bacchus for a bunch of grapes! 

Margaret smiled, and said that when 

she was first old enough to think about 

11 



162 MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS. 

Christianity, she cried out for her dear 
old Greek gods. Its spirituality seemed 
nakedness. She could not and would 
not receive it. It was a long while 
before she saw its deeper meaning. 

CAROLINE W. HEALEY. 

May 7, 1841. 




















































































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